MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE LAB(YRINTH): Few on Kaua`i dispute that Uncle-Chair Kaipo Potter operates his Council Chamber of Secrets with a iron-fisted and paternalistic combination of deceit and intimidation.
But never is that more so than when he and his fellow Minotaurs cut short testimony they don’t like by falsely claiming the state sunshine law forbids members of the public from discussing matters not specifically on the agenda.
What does not bode well for the future of open governance on Kaua`i is that at last Wednesday’s council meeting someone who should know better didn’t, as usual, just remain silent when Chair Asing used this misrepresentation to cut off testimony he didn’t want spoken on television but, without invitation, that someone initiated a challenge to public testimony based on the falsification.
New County Attorney Al Castillo is apparently so new to the job that he has yet to review the essential Office of Information Practices (OIP) rulings on the matter and has rather let Asing’s mealy-mouth interpretation guide his actions.
While testifying before passage of the council’s ill-advised million-dollar flush down the crapper of toruism promotion, council watchdog and “nitpicker” Ken Taylor used the opportunity to suggest the money might be better spent on other essentials- such as addressing one of his pet issues, peak oil.
But while Asing sat passively giving Taylor his perfunctory “three minutes” who should rudely interrupt and raise an objections but Castillo who has no business in any way shape or form doing so, warning Asing that the testimony was “off-agenda” and should not be allowed.
The issue was quite clearly addressed by the OIP relatively recently, in 2005 when someone on the Big Island raised the issue of their council’s tradition of allowing members of the public to speak on any subject they desire- on or off the agenda- for a short period of time at the end of each meeting.
The OIP said two things quite clearly and forcefully.
First of all OIP opinion 2005-02 says
A board may permit members of the public to speak at a meeting on matters that are not on the agenda but is not required to do so.
The important word there is “may”. The discretionary term gives the chair the ability to disallow testimony that is not about something that is on the agenda. But though he is allowed to do so, he is not required by law to stop it, as Asing has consistently claimed for years.
This has led to councilmembers- each of whom chairs a council committee- to use the same lie to control testimony at their various committee meetings... especially councilmembers Jay Furfaro and Darryl Kaneshiro who routinely follow Asing’s lead when someone says something they don’t wish to hear- or more importantly something they don’t want others to hear.
Each has refused to admit that it is up to them to allow it or not, going so far as to reiterate that they would gladly allow the testimony but state law forbids them from doing so.
Castillo was certainly not just reminding them they had the discretionary power to disallow the testimony but warning them that to allow the testimony might be counter to the Sunshine Law.
Secondly, the other half of the ruling is restrictive of what one certain group of people can and can’t discuss at the meetings- councilmembers themselves.
It says:
Board members may not discuss, deliberate or decide matters that are not on the agenda, Thus if a board elects to hear public statements regarding matters not on the agenda and the statements relate to matters over which the board has supervision, control, jurisdiction or advisory power, the board must be careful not to respond by discussing the matter.
Apparently, rather than doing his homework and verifying whether Asing and the Kaua`i County Council’s standard operation procedure complies with state law, Castillo made the fatal mistake of assuming that Asing and his henchman County Clerk Peter Nakamura weren’t willfully ignoring the Sunshine Law and OIP and substituting their own outlaw justice for the actual meaning and intent of the statute.
Since Castillo is new on the job and indeed new to governmental and public policy law we’ll assume this was a mere understandable oversight. Afterall, hey- who would figure that the council chair and the county clerk would conspire to violate the Sunshine Law- something that, if true, could yield jail time for the two?
We’ll assume that Castillo isn’t “in on” the plot as the last two county attorneys apparently were after having this matter brought to their attention numerous times by various “nitpickers”- and PNN reports- in the past.
We do hope that Castillo will take this as a wakeup call to make sure he personally dots the i’s and crosses the t’s on the legality of the council’s maze of procedures.
One incident like this under the new CA is understandable but a second would indicate complicity in activities that have given Kaua`i a statewide reputation as “a separate kingdom” when it comes to complying with state law, especially the Sunshine statutes.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Minotaurs. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Minotaurs. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
DON’T LET GO, DON’T LET GO:
DON’T LET GO, DON’T LET GO: Kaua`i has never been a hotbed of citizen participation when it comes to local government.
Even among the activist “usual suspects” most prefer to glom onto political issues that are state or even national in nature and if county government is involved they enter with a sense of helplessness as if approaching, if at all, an amorphous phagocyte ready to gobble them up dare they approach the monolithic blob.
Those of us who dare enter the labyrinth of the Minotaurs are steeled against its tentacles and though outrage is the coin of our realm it’s never a sure bet that our indignation will translate to community-wide ire.
How else do you explain why it took two years for Councilperson Tim Bynum to go public with the fact that councilmembers are not permitted to introduce legislation without the approval of the paternalistic hierarchy?
How else do you explain that it took another Councilperson Lani Kawahara to expose the lack of availability of public documents?
The trepidation Bynum and Kawahara felt over the months over openly challenging the status quo and leading up to last Wednesday’s challenge was only overcome after a last ditch effort at an end run around the beast that ended in humiliation and defeat.
For some reason this stab at the heart of our representational form of government has seemingly lit a spark if the daily letters to the editor of the local newspaper- which are now posted at the kauaiinfo.org web site set up by Bynum and Kawahara- are any indication.
Today someone went a step further by anonymously posting an on-line petition - with 42 signatories as of press time- that reads:
We, the residents of Kaua`i, respectfully request County Council agenda time for public discussion on open government, including, but not limited to, proposals related to the following items:
1. Councilmember's access to the agenda;
2. The placement of public documents, including meeting minutes, on the County's website;
3. Equitable and timely circulation of council service documents;
4. General access to information by the public and Councilmembers.
But don’t expect the agenda for next Wednesday’s full council meeting to reflect public anger when it’s posted tomorrow- or any time in the near future, especially as long as the protestations are made from afar.
While it’s gratifying to see the outpouring of support for the two councilmembers who dared to speak up for the community it’s only a first step in reclaiming our local government.
Future steps must include focusing on the machinations of the power elite, learning their stonewalling and obfuscating ways and, especially, showing up when they meet and holding their feet to the fire on every item.
Beyond the issues Bynum and Kawahara have raised are issues involving the webcast and cablecasts of council meetings which could be sent out live at no extra cost with the flip of a switch. Others include demanding full descriptions of agenda items and a full reading of them at the meetings. Eventually we must demand to have live telephone and email testimony taken on all items as many jurisdictions across the country allow.
Even if this agenda-access issue is resolved favorably if people go back to sleep when it’s over and allow not just the council but the administration to twist and warp laws and rules to their own ends, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when the good guys on the council just give up- as many have done in the past- and “join ‘em” when they figure out the people won’t stand by their sides when they “fight ‘em”.
Even among the activist “usual suspects” most prefer to glom onto political issues that are state or even national in nature and if county government is involved they enter with a sense of helplessness as if approaching, if at all, an amorphous phagocyte ready to gobble them up dare they approach the monolithic blob.
Those of us who dare enter the labyrinth of the Minotaurs are steeled against its tentacles and though outrage is the coin of our realm it’s never a sure bet that our indignation will translate to community-wide ire.
How else do you explain why it took two years for Councilperson Tim Bynum to go public with the fact that councilmembers are not permitted to introduce legislation without the approval of the paternalistic hierarchy?
How else do you explain that it took another Councilperson Lani Kawahara to expose the lack of availability of public documents?
The trepidation Bynum and Kawahara felt over the months over openly challenging the status quo and leading up to last Wednesday’s challenge was only overcome after a last ditch effort at an end run around the beast that ended in humiliation and defeat.
For some reason this stab at the heart of our representational form of government has seemingly lit a spark if the daily letters to the editor of the local newspaper- which are now posted at the kauaiinfo.org web site set up by Bynum and Kawahara- are any indication.
Today someone went a step further by anonymously posting an on-line petition - with 42 signatories as of press time- that reads:
We, the residents of Kaua`i, respectfully request County Council agenda time for public discussion on open government, including, but not limited to, proposals related to the following items:
1. Councilmember's access to the agenda;
2. The placement of public documents, including meeting minutes, on the County's website;
3. Equitable and timely circulation of council service documents;
4. General access to information by the public and Councilmembers.
But don’t expect the agenda for next Wednesday’s full council meeting to reflect public anger when it’s posted tomorrow- or any time in the near future, especially as long as the protestations are made from afar.
While it’s gratifying to see the outpouring of support for the two councilmembers who dared to speak up for the community it’s only a first step in reclaiming our local government.
Future steps must include focusing on the machinations of the power elite, learning their stonewalling and obfuscating ways and, especially, showing up when they meet and holding their feet to the fire on every item.
Beyond the issues Bynum and Kawahara have raised are issues involving the webcast and cablecasts of council meetings which could be sent out live at no extra cost with the flip of a switch. Others include demanding full descriptions of agenda items and a full reading of them at the meetings. Eventually we must demand to have live telephone and email testimony taken on all items as many jurisdictions across the country allow.
Even if this agenda-access issue is resolved favorably if people go back to sleep when it’s over and allow not just the council but the administration to twist and warp laws and rules to their own ends, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves when the good guys on the council just give up- as many have done in the past- and “join ‘em” when they figure out the people won’t stand by their sides when they “fight ‘em”.
Monday, February 16, 2009
AGGRESSIVELY RELIA-BULL
AGGRESSIVELY RELIA-BULL: It would be nice to think that each flagrant flouting of the Hawai`i sunshine law by the Kaua`i County Council was just an “opportunity” to “educate” some “well meaning” but forgetful “public servants” as to the law- a law that, if intentionally violated, carries a fine, jail time or both.
It would also be nice if we could believe Santa Claus will drop everything we ever wanted down the chimney, the tooth fairy will leave a big sack of cash under our pillows or that a new president will change the fundamental way American government functions under corporate rule.
And so another week, another case of the obvious contempt for the law by the Minotaurs in the bowels of that den of iniquity known as the Council Chambers.
This time it’s in the form of a case- S-INVES-P 09-6- accepted for investigation by the Office of Information Practices (OIP). It was filed after a particularly absurd little dance performed after the Feb. 4 council committee meetings were over.
In a “complaint” letter to OIP- or “request” for investigation as they prefer we call them- Glenn Mickens describes what happened after the last committee gavel fell that day.
From: Glenn Mickens
Subject: Sunshine Law Violation
Date: February 9, 2009 2:49:41 PM HST
To: oip@hawaii.gov
Attention: Mr. Paul Tsukiyama, Director
Dear Mr. Tsukiyama:
I spoke to Cindy of your office this morning about what appeared to be a violation of the sunshine law by the Kauai County Council. She advised that she thought I had a legitimate complaint and requested that I submit it in writing to you. The situation was as follows:
On February 4, 2009 the Council held a committee meeting that lasted from 9 am to about 11 am. The meeting agenda was brief consisting of only three items and no executive meeting was noticed.
When the Council meeting was adjourned members of the public left the chambers where the meeting was held. Three members of the public, including me, remained in the hallway adjacent to the chambers. The shade in the window of the meeting room was pulled down and the door to the chamber was locked as is done for executive meetings. Six of the council members remained in the chambers along with one member of the County administration.
When I asked an assistant county clerk about what was occurring he said, "They are discussing the renovation of the offices in the County building."
I am filing this complaint because it seems to me that the public was wrongfully excluded from hearing the discussions held and no notice was given about them.
The sunshine law requires that all meeting- even executive sessions- be fully described and placed on an agenda six days before the meeting.
Within a few days Mickens received an email from OIP staff attorney Jennifer Z. Brooks that stated.
The Office of Information Practices has opened the above referenced file relating to a request for an investigation regarding the Kaua`i County Council under the Sunshine law part I of Chapter 92. Hawaii Revised Statutes
Ms Brooks also enclosed a letter asking the council essentially “what the %*$#”
It read:
The Honorable Bill “Kaipo” Asing
Chairperson
Kauai County Council
4396 Rice street
Lihue HI 96766
Re: Request for investigation (S-INVES-P 09-6)
The OIP has received a request from Mr. Glenn Mickens that this office investigate whether the executive session held by the Kauai County Council (the “Council”) on its February 4th meeting violated part I of Chapter 92 of HRS. A Copy of Mr. Micken’s request is enclosed for your information.
We ask for your assistance in our review of this request. Please provide us with a detailed explanation, including any relevant legal citations setting forth the council position on this matter and any other information you deem relevant to this inquiry. Please provide us with a transcript of this meeting if available or in absence of a transcript the minutes of the meeting. We request the Council provide this response to OIP no later than ten business days from receipt of this letter.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this matter please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned attorney
Jennifer Z Brooks
Staff Attorney
What will come of this though is anyone’s guess because the under-funded, under-staffed and overworked OIP has been loath to hand down official opinions recently and only did so twice last year- the lowest number ever..
When Honolulu blogger Ian Lind asked why in a post a week or so back he actually got an answer from OIP Director Paul Tsukiyama.
According to Lind:
Tsukiyama says his office actually authored 45 written opinions during 2008, up from a total of 39 the previous year.
He says the difference is accounted for by 43 “informal” or memorandum opinions which are neither published nor circulated.
(Tsukiyama wrote) These opinions are deemed to be of more limited guidance because they address issues that have already been more fully addressed in formal opinions, or because their factual basis limits their general applicability. These opinions enerally (sic) provide elss (sic) detailed legal discussion.
Tsukiyama says that “in the face of diminishing resources” to deal with its longstanding backlog,
(Tsukiyama wrote) OIP has elected to address more cases by way of informal (unpublished) opinions, summary dispositions, and by written and verbal corresponence (sic) as opposed to formal published opinions.
During 2008, only 4.4 percent of OIP’s written opinions were published, while 95.6 percent fell in that information and unpublished category.
But the problem with these “informal” opinions is that they are usually even more “advisory” in nature than the usual formal opinions since they are not fully legally researched and handed down.
And guess which “separate kingdom” legislative body takes full advantage of this?
A review of the OIP’s official opinions shows they are presented with a specific question of law and definitive “yes” or “no” answer.
But the informal ones are written as letters that generally discuss and “advise” rather than answer the question raised
This led to an informal opinion on the infamous 3.07(e) provision that Kaua`i voters were tricked into removing from our county charter last November. It contained wording of the ballot giving the impression that to vote “yes” would require the council to adhere to the state sunshine law when it actually removed a provision that limited executive sessions on Kaua`i to matters involving “claims”.
But when OIP finally addressed the matter they sent a lawyerly well-crafted letter that actually avoided the issue by writing it so it could be interpreted in two different ways. It stressed that the sunshine law must always be followed and separately said it had no jurisdiction over the charter provision. since it only deals with “Part I of HRS Chapter 92”, aka the sunshine law. It indicated that only the Kaua`i county attorney- or the 5th Circuit Court if someone were to bring suit- can opine on 3.07(e)
This allowed the council to claim vindication by reading it to have said that the OIP opines that as far as they’re concerned 3.07(e) doesn’t apply to the sunshine law and therefore, since the council must follow the sunshine law, 3.07(e) didn’t need to be followed.
That led to a bizarre little vignette at a recent council meeting where some councilmembers tried to clarify it all verbally with the deputy county attorney who refused to opine asking them to “put it in writing” and repeating like a mantra that “the agenda item as posted is legal”- including the reference to 3.07(e) which remains on executive session agendas even after the “claims only” section was removed by voters.
Recently the OIP opened an investigation into a complaint PNN brought. against councilmember Jay Furfaro for seeking to discuss- and solicit votes for- a piece of then un-introduced and un-agendaed legislation.
The 10 days for the response in the Furfaro case is long past and we still haven’t heard from OIP so today we requested an update.
It would also be nice if we could believe Santa Claus will drop everything we ever wanted down the chimney, the tooth fairy will leave a big sack of cash under our pillows or that a new president will change the fundamental way American government functions under corporate rule.
And so another week, another case of the obvious contempt for the law by the Minotaurs in the bowels of that den of iniquity known as the Council Chambers.
This time it’s in the form of a case- S-INVES-P 09-6- accepted for investigation by the Office of Information Practices (OIP). It was filed after a particularly absurd little dance performed after the Feb. 4 council committee meetings were over.
In a “complaint” letter to OIP- or “request” for investigation as they prefer we call them- Glenn Mickens describes what happened after the last committee gavel fell that day.
From: Glenn Mickens
Subject: Sunshine Law Violation
Date: February 9, 2009 2:49:41 PM HST
To: oip@hawaii.gov
Attention: Mr. Paul Tsukiyama, Director
Dear Mr. Tsukiyama:
I spoke to Cindy of your office this morning about what appeared to be a violation of the sunshine law by the Kauai County Council. She advised that she thought I had a legitimate complaint and requested that I submit it in writing to you. The situation was as follows:
On February 4, 2009 the Council held a committee meeting that lasted from 9 am to about 11 am. The meeting agenda was brief consisting of only three items and no executive meeting was noticed.
When the Council meeting was adjourned members of the public left the chambers where the meeting was held. Three members of the public, including me, remained in the hallway adjacent to the chambers. The shade in the window of the meeting room was pulled down and the door to the chamber was locked as is done for executive meetings. Six of the council members remained in the chambers along with one member of the County administration.
When I asked an assistant county clerk about what was occurring he said, "They are discussing the renovation of the offices in the County building."
I am filing this complaint because it seems to me that the public was wrongfully excluded from hearing the discussions held and no notice was given about them.
The sunshine law requires that all meeting- even executive sessions- be fully described and placed on an agenda six days before the meeting.
Within a few days Mickens received an email from OIP staff attorney Jennifer Z. Brooks that stated.
The Office of Information Practices has opened the above referenced file relating to a request for an investigation regarding the Kaua`i County Council under the Sunshine law part I of Chapter 92. Hawaii Revised Statutes
Ms Brooks also enclosed a letter asking the council essentially “what the %*$#”
It read:
The Honorable Bill “Kaipo” Asing
Chairperson
Kauai County Council
4396 Rice street
Lihue HI 96766
Re: Request for investigation (S-INVES-P 09-6)
The OIP has received a request from Mr. Glenn Mickens that this office investigate whether the executive session held by the Kauai County Council (the “Council”) on its February 4th meeting violated part I of Chapter 92 of HRS. A Copy of Mr. Micken’s request is enclosed for your information.
We ask for your assistance in our review of this request. Please provide us with a detailed explanation, including any relevant legal citations setting forth the council position on this matter and any other information you deem relevant to this inquiry. Please provide us with a transcript of this meeting if available or in absence of a transcript the minutes of the meeting. We request the Council provide this response to OIP no later than ten business days from receipt of this letter.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this matter please do not hesitate to contact the undersigned attorney
Jennifer Z Brooks
Staff Attorney
What will come of this though is anyone’s guess because the under-funded, under-staffed and overworked OIP has been loath to hand down official opinions recently and only did so twice last year- the lowest number ever..
When Honolulu blogger Ian Lind asked why in a post a week or so back he actually got an answer from OIP Director Paul Tsukiyama.
According to Lind:
Tsukiyama says his office actually authored 45 written opinions during 2008, up from a total of 39 the previous year.
He says the difference is accounted for by 43 “informal” or memorandum opinions which are neither published nor circulated.
(Tsukiyama wrote) These opinions are deemed to be of more limited guidance because they address issues that have already been more fully addressed in formal opinions, or because their factual basis limits their general applicability. These opinions enerally (sic) provide elss (sic) detailed legal discussion.
Tsukiyama says that “in the face of diminishing resources” to deal with its longstanding backlog,
(Tsukiyama wrote) OIP has elected to address more cases by way of informal (unpublished) opinions, summary dispositions, and by written and verbal corresponence (sic) as opposed to formal published opinions.
During 2008, only 4.4 percent of OIP’s written opinions were published, while 95.6 percent fell in that information and unpublished category.
But the problem with these “informal” opinions is that they are usually even more “advisory” in nature than the usual formal opinions since they are not fully legally researched and handed down.
And guess which “separate kingdom” legislative body takes full advantage of this?
A review of the OIP’s official opinions shows they are presented with a specific question of law and definitive “yes” or “no” answer.
But the informal ones are written as letters that generally discuss and “advise” rather than answer the question raised
This led to an informal opinion on the infamous 3.07(e) provision that Kaua`i voters were tricked into removing from our county charter last November. It contained wording of the ballot giving the impression that to vote “yes” would require the council to adhere to the state sunshine law when it actually removed a provision that limited executive sessions on Kaua`i to matters involving “claims”.
But when OIP finally addressed the matter they sent a lawyerly well-crafted letter that actually avoided the issue by writing it so it could be interpreted in two different ways. It stressed that the sunshine law must always be followed and separately said it had no jurisdiction over the charter provision. since it only deals with “Part I of HRS Chapter 92”, aka the sunshine law. It indicated that only the Kaua`i county attorney- or the 5th Circuit Court if someone were to bring suit- can opine on 3.07(e)
This allowed the council to claim vindication by reading it to have said that the OIP opines that as far as they’re concerned 3.07(e) doesn’t apply to the sunshine law and therefore, since the council must follow the sunshine law, 3.07(e) didn’t need to be followed.
That led to a bizarre little vignette at a recent council meeting where some councilmembers tried to clarify it all verbally with the deputy county attorney who refused to opine asking them to “put it in writing” and repeating like a mantra that “the agenda item as posted is legal”- including the reference to 3.07(e) which remains on executive session agendas even after the “claims only” section was removed by voters.
Recently the OIP opened an investigation into a complaint PNN brought. against councilmember Jay Furfaro for seeking to discuss- and solicit votes for- a piece of then un-introduced and un-agendaed legislation.
The 10 days for the response in the Furfaro case is long past and we still haven’t heard from OIP so today we requested an update.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
SUNDAY FIRST PERSON SPECIAL
SUNDAY FIRST PERSON SPECIAL: On Thursday Joan Conrow’s post about Wednesday’s Council meeting spurred a comment about Kaipo Asing really hit home.
It came from a self described “locally born and raised, and part Hawaiian” person, signed Miliaulani and mirrors what, though unsaid in this space, must be said in all this.
With all the talk about Minotaurs and Captain Queeg it’s important to set the record straight. Posted below are both Miliaulani’s tome and a response that needs the light of day.
----------
Miliaulani wrote
Locally born and raised, and part Hawaiian like Kaipo, I have voted consistently for this man for as long as he has been running for office. What I admired about him for many years was the one-man campaign he ran, keeping his spending to a minimum, his integrity unable to be bought. I don't understand what happened along the way, but I do believe the very qualities I admired over the years must still be a part of who this man is. There is no doubt of his love for Kauai and his desire to preserve the specialness of this place, but he has made some obvious missteps. If anything, he needs to be open to new ides, new ways of doing things. Just because things were done the same way for the last 26 years, doesn't means it cannot be improved upon. If other councilmembers are having difficulties with the processes, than it behooves him to listen and implement change that is beneficial to all concerned.
I voted for Lani and want her to be able to do her job just as effectively as Kaipo. She is young with fresh ideas and she is helping to bring County government into this new age of technology. Kaipo should support that and be willing to change with the times. If not, perhaps it is time for him to step down. He has done many good things for Kauai and we owe him gratitude for his years of service, however, perhaps it is time for a change.
I support Lani and Tim's desire for a change in the way the council runs their business. Lani openly admitted that she was somewhat intimidated by Kaipo and so she communicated via written correspondence. Nothing wrong with that and I admire her for saying as much publicly. Being the only woman on the council makes it even more intimidating, especially when both Kaipo and Darryl have talked down to her in a patronizing way in the past. Lani does not deserve that. She is green yes, so the responsibility lies with the seasoned councilmembers to assist in any way possible to help her to do her job, if they are truly 'ohana as Jay said.
Miliaulani
--------
Andy Parx wrote
Most of us feel the same way Miliaulani. We voted for Kaipo the first time he ran and every two year since (except the year he ran for Mayor). We even “plunked” many times, voting only for him.
That ended for me two elections ago.
He was our hero, fighting against uncontrolled development and administration incompetence. In many ways, he still does.
But he was never really one buck the system and so learned how to work within it even if he wound up on the losing end of 6-1 votes- or 5-2 or 4-3 when he had an ally or two- for decades . No one doubts he still does what he thinks is “best for the community”.
Unfortunately the political system he learned and under which he now leads was built on secrecy and the back room deals of mostly bad people who not so coincidentally had, for the most part, their own personal and financial interests at heart.
Apparently he feels that since he has the best interest of we average, local, working-class people at heart, the methods that worked then to hurt the people can be used to help them- the ends justifying the means.
He’s 73 years old and isn’t going to change how he does business now. He justifies it by thinking he has our best interest at heart- and maybe he does.
But that isn’t enough.
Kaipo will tell anyone who listens- especially new councilpersons- that the key to success is to not “rock the boat” and whatever he has to do to make thing come out “right” is ok, even if he has to violate the spirit- or even the letter- of the rules and laws that provide for transparency and open government.
It’s very sad for those of us who love him.
Time was when there was both a beneficent and a greedy “plantation style” of governing. Both were paternalistic because that was the way everyone operated. But the era of the magnanimous luna are gone, supplanted in large part by the grassroots democracy that fingertip availability of information provides us.
It’s kind of the political equivalent of what happened when the printing press let people read the bible for themselves. We can all read all the documents and reports and get answers to questions directly from the source... we don’t need an intermediary to do that for us anymore.
Kaipo, by remaining the same while times have changed, has become an unacceptable relic of an age when paternalistic “I know best” governance was simply how one led and it was only a matter of “good” people and “bad” people using it to exercise power that mattered.
Kaipo fails to see it is the paternalism itself is the problem. We no longer need or want to have to rely on the vagaries of hoping people will act in our interest.
He thinks that if he has to bend a few rules and even disregard few laws it’s ok because he is talking care of us.
Kaipo was my “hero” on the council for many years and he certainly thinks he is dong the best thing for us all. It’s very sad for all of us, but we can’t stand by and let this happen- we’ve done it for too long because we had no voice on the council, with the exception of when Gary Hooser was there.
Gary didn’t have a “second” but now we have elected two councilpersons who are willing to say the emperor is naked. We need to support them and see to it that Kaipo keeps his promise that this will be his last year of service.
Were this 1976, I’m sure he’d feel the same way.
It came from a self described “locally born and raised, and part Hawaiian” person, signed Miliaulani and mirrors what, though unsaid in this space, must be said in all this.
With all the talk about Minotaurs and Captain Queeg it’s important to set the record straight. Posted below are both Miliaulani’s tome and a response that needs the light of day.
----------
Miliaulani wrote
Locally born and raised, and part Hawaiian like Kaipo, I have voted consistently for this man for as long as he has been running for office. What I admired about him for many years was the one-man campaign he ran, keeping his spending to a minimum, his integrity unable to be bought. I don't understand what happened along the way, but I do believe the very qualities I admired over the years must still be a part of who this man is. There is no doubt of his love for Kauai and his desire to preserve the specialness of this place, but he has made some obvious missteps. If anything, he needs to be open to new ides, new ways of doing things. Just because things were done the same way for the last 26 years, doesn't means it cannot be improved upon. If other councilmembers are having difficulties with the processes, than it behooves him to listen and implement change that is beneficial to all concerned.
I voted for Lani and want her to be able to do her job just as effectively as Kaipo. She is young with fresh ideas and she is helping to bring County government into this new age of technology. Kaipo should support that and be willing to change with the times. If not, perhaps it is time for him to step down. He has done many good things for Kauai and we owe him gratitude for his years of service, however, perhaps it is time for a change.
I support Lani and Tim's desire for a change in the way the council runs their business. Lani openly admitted that she was somewhat intimidated by Kaipo and so she communicated via written correspondence. Nothing wrong with that and I admire her for saying as much publicly. Being the only woman on the council makes it even more intimidating, especially when both Kaipo and Darryl have talked down to her in a patronizing way in the past. Lani does not deserve that. She is green yes, so the responsibility lies with the seasoned councilmembers to assist in any way possible to help her to do her job, if they are truly 'ohana as Jay said.
Miliaulani
--------
Andy Parx wrote
Most of us feel the same way Miliaulani. We voted for Kaipo the first time he ran and every two year since (except the year he ran for Mayor). We even “plunked” many times, voting only for him.
That ended for me two elections ago.
He was our hero, fighting against uncontrolled development and administration incompetence. In many ways, he still does.
But he was never really one buck the system and so learned how to work within it even if he wound up on the losing end of 6-1 votes- or 5-2 or 4-3 when he had an ally or two- for decades . No one doubts he still does what he thinks is “best for the community”.
Unfortunately the political system he learned and under which he now leads was built on secrecy and the back room deals of mostly bad people who not so coincidentally had, for the most part, their own personal and financial interests at heart.
Apparently he feels that since he has the best interest of we average, local, working-class people at heart, the methods that worked then to hurt the people can be used to help them- the ends justifying the means.
He’s 73 years old and isn’t going to change how he does business now. He justifies it by thinking he has our best interest at heart- and maybe he does.
But that isn’t enough.
Kaipo will tell anyone who listens- especially new councilpersons- that the key to success is to not “rock the boat” and whatever he has to do to make thing come out “right” is ok, even if he has to violate the spirit- or even the letter- of the rules and laws that provide for transparency and open government.
It’s very sad for those of us who love him.
Time was when there was both a beneficent and a greedy “plantation style” of governing. Both were paternalistic because that was the way everyone operated. But the era of the magnanimous luna are gone, supplanted in large part by the grassroots democracy that fingertip availability of information provides us.
It’s kind of the political equivalent of what happened when the printing press let people read the bible for themselves. We can all read all the documents and reports and get answers to questions directly from the source... we don’t need an intermediary to do that for us anymore.
Kaipo, by remaining the same while times have changed, has become an unacceptable relic of an age when paternalistic “I know best” governance was simply how one led and it was only a matter of “good” people and “bad” people using it to exercise power that mattered.
Kaipo fails to see it is the paternalism itself is the problem. We no longer need or want to have to rely on the vagaries of hoping people will act in our interest.
He thinks that if he has to bend a few rules and even disregard few laws it’s ok because he is talking care of us.
Kaipo was my “hero” on the council for many years and he certainly thinks he is dong the best thing for us all. It’s very sad for all of us, but we can’t stand by and let this happen- we’ve done it for too long because we had no voice on the council, with the exception of when Gary Hooser was there.
Gary didn’t have a “second” but now we have elected two councilpersons who are willing to say the emperor is naked. We need to support them and see to it that Kaipo keeps his promise that this will be his last year of service.
Were this 1976, I’m sure he’d feel the same way.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
THEY CAN’T DREAM WELL BECAUSE OF THEIR HORNS
THEY CAN’T DREAM WELL BECAUSE OF THEIR HORNS: You gotta wonder sometimes what’s going on in the heads of some of the top Kaua`i activists.
A lot of them worked their butts off to gather petition signatures to put a measure on the ballot and campaigned hard to pass a Charter amendment last fall
But since then the silence about enforcing it has been deafening. Other than our two columns last year on the implications and last week on the council’s attempts to bury the matter in executive session no one has heard a peep from anyone either verbally or in print about the law that essentially bans the planning commission from processing and issuing visitor accommodation permits and puts that onus on the county council... at least for now.
Fast forward to today, almost three months after passage and many of the self same activists just tried to slow down or stop a new resort in traffic-plagued overdeveloped Kapa`a, not by citing the new amendment but by continuing a legal battle- one they apparently lost- to require an environmental assessment on the project at a planning commission meeting Tuesday.
The silence was finally broken, not by the dozens who filed past the commission to testify, but when local newspaper reporter Michael Levine dared breach the subject in his Wednesday report on the meeting.
Levine’s a pretty sharp cookie and it must have occurred to him to question it too because after describing all the complicated legal wrangling over the case he wrote:
While Tuesday’s vote appears to be the commission’s final act on the two developments, it could also be one of the last major development applications for tourist accommodations to be heard by the body for some time.
On Nov. 4, voters approved a charter amendment essentially transferring the power to approve permits for tourist accommodations to the County Council upon a two-thirds affirmative vote of the council and allowing the council, if it enacts a rate-of-growth limit that is consistent with the General Plan, to delegate the approval authority to the Planning Commission. How, and when, the council assumes control remains up in the air.
“There’s an urgency for us to get clarity in the legal interpretations,” said Councilman Jay Furfaro, chair of the council’s Planning Committee, adding there is a “series of interpretations” the council must make, such as whether the growth rate is tied to a unit count or, as in the General Plan, to a daily census number of visitors.
“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Councilman Tim Bynum, who said he understands the intent of the new legislation, but is unclear on “the interpretations of what the law means and how we implement that appropriately. I don’t have a good answer. I don’t know at this point. I’m not an attorney and I’m not a planner.”
It appears the oft-times dunderhead Bynum and the disingenuously arrogant Furfaro are apparently unable to read for themselves because no matter what process the council chooses to deal with permits themselves the amendment is clear in that it is the council, not the planning commission, that must process and approve permits.
Though we were stymied after an hour of trying to find a copy of the apparently-purged wording of the amendment at the county’s web site, fortunately Island Breath’s Juan Wilson had archived a copy because, even during the election campaign season last year he had been unable to locate an on-line version.
Though the amendment leaves the details up to the council to “adopt such ordinances, laws, rules and regulations as are necessary to carry out the terms and intent of this amendment to the Charter” one thing is clear- the power of permitting no longer rests with the planning commission and has been transferred to the council which may reassign the power to the commission after meeting some requirements that, though clear, throw a money-wrench into the governmental cogs..
The very first sentence of the new charter section- which along with the others passed in 2008 (and even those approved in 2006 for that matter) are still not part of the version of the charter posted at the county web site- begins by saying: :
The power to process and to issue any zoning, use, subdivision, or variance permit for more than one transient accommodation unit shall be vested in and exercisable exclusively by the council.
What kind of “legal interpretation” does Furfaro need to read and understand that? What trouble does Bynum have understanding “what the law means”.
It’s their job to write laws. One would think they could read it.
Never has the “what are you stupid or do you think we are” conundrum been more clearly elucidated
But we expect this kind of behavior from Kaua`i councilpersons. What is flabbergasting is that people who have invested time and money fighting all sorts of actions by the commission since November have not even mentioned the fact that the commissioners have no business processing these things in the first place by putting them on their agenda.
Chalk it up once again to Minotaurs like Furfaro and Bynum who join Chair Kaipo Asing, Planning Director Ian Costa, Mayor Bernard Carvalho and the others in county government who join the chorus singing “we’ll do what’s wrong as long as we can”
And as to the activists who seem to have the attention span of a gnat even when it was through their stupendous efforts that the law was enacted, we have to ask once again as manager Casey Stengel asked of the ’62 Mets, “can’t anyone here play this game/”
A lot of them worked their butts off to gather petition signatures to put a measure on the ballot and campaigned hard to pass a Charter amendment last fall
But since then the silence about enforcing it has been deafening. Other than our two columns last year on the implications and last week on the council’s attempts to bury the matter in executive session no one has heard a peep from anyone either verbally or in print about the law that essentially bans the planning commission from processing and issuing visitor accommodation permits and puts that onus on the county council... at least for now.
Fast forward to today, almost three months after passage and many of the self same activists just tried to slow down or stop a new resort in traffic-plagued overdeveloped Kapa`a, not by citing the new amendment but by continuing a legal battle- one they apparently lost- to require an environmental assessment on the project at a planning commission meeting Tuesday.
The silence was finally broken, not by the dozens who filed past the commission to testify, but when local newspaper reporter Michael Levine dared breach the subject in his Wednesday report on the meeting.
Levine’s a pretty sharp cookie and it must have occurred to him to question it too because after describing all the complicated legal wrangling over the case he wrote:
While Tuesday’s vote appears to be the commission’s final act on the two developments, it could also be one of the last major development applications for tourist accommodations to be heard by the body for some time.
On Nov. 4, voters approved a charter amendment essentially transferring the power to approve permits for tourist accommodations to the County Council upon a two-thirds affirmative vote of the council and allowing the council, if it enacts a rate-of-growth limit that is consistent with the General Plan, to delegate the approval authority to the Planning Commission. How, and when, the council assumes control remains up in the air.
“There’s an urgency for us to get clarity in the legal interpretations,” said Councilman Jay Furfaro, chair of the council’s Planning Committee, adding there is a “series of interpretations” the council must make, such as whether the growth rate is tied to a unit count or, as in the General Plan, to a daily census number of visitors.
“We’re in uncharted territory,” said Councilman Tim Bynum, who said he understands the intent of the new legislation, but is unclear on “the interpretations of what the law means and how we implement that appropriately. I don’t have a good answer. I don’t know at this point. I’m not an attorney and I’m not a planner.”
It appears the oft-times dunderhead Bynum and the disingenuously arrogant Furfaro are apparently unable to read for themselves because no matter what process the council chooses to deal with permits themselves the amendment is clear in that it is the council, not the planning commission, that must process and approve permits.
Though we were stymied after an hour of trying to find a copy of the apparently-purged wording of the amendment at the county’s web site, fortunately Island Breath’s Juan Wilson had archived a copy because, even during the election campaign season last year he had been unable to locate an on-line version.
Though the amendment leaves the details up to the council to “adopt such ordinances, laws, rules and regulations as are necessary to carry out the terms and intent of this amendment to the Charter” one thing is clear- the power of permitting no longer rests with the planning commission and has been transferred to the council which may reassign the power to the commission after meeting some requirements that, though clear, throw a money-wrench into the governmental cogs..
The very first sentence of the new charter section- which along with the others passed in 2008 (and even those approved in 2006 for that matter) are still not part of the version of the charter posted at the county web site- begins by saying: :
The power to process and to issue any zoning, use, subdivision, or variance permit for more than one transient accommodation unit shall be vested in and exercisable exclusively by the council.
What kind of “legal interpretation” does Furfaro need to read and understand that? What trouble does Bynum have understanding “what the law means”.
It’s their job to write laws. One would think they could read it.
Never has the “what are you stupid or do you think we are” conundrum been more clearly elucidated
But we expect this kind of behavior from Kaua`i councilpersons. What is flabbergasting is that people who have invested time and money fighting all sorts of actions by the commission since November have not even mentioned the fact that the commissioners have no business processing these things in the first place by putting them on their agenda.
Chalk it up once again to Minotaurs like Furfaro and Bynum who join Chair Kaipo Asing, Planning Director Ian Costa, Mayor Bernard Carvalho and the others in county government who join the chorus singing “we’ll do what’s wrong as long as we can”
And as to the activists who seem to have the attention span of a gnat even when it was through their stupendous efforts that the law was enacted, we have to ask once again as manager Casey Stengel asked of the ’62 Mets, “can’t anyone here play this game/”
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
BREAKING UP THE PACK
BREAKING UP THE PACK: Tomorrow’s showdown at the C-O-K Corral- aka the County of Kaua`i Council Chambers- has, much to our surprise, drawn beaucoup attention in the newspaper and among even those most politically distracted citizens on the island.
As many have heard in the reams of e-mails flying about, Wednesday’s agenda includes two diametrically opposed items on the subjects of open governance and transparency that dissident councilmembers Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara forced into public scrutiny in June.
Not only is the promised “discussion” of the archaic council rules up for debate but, in response, the forces of darkness have led Councilpersons Jay Furfaro and his sidekick “nice guy” Dickie Chang to try to block any changes.
They’ve introduced a resolution asking the council to “appoint a special advisory committee” made up of three well known allies of Chair Kaipo “the Minotaur” Asing- charter members of the old boys network former Council Chair and long time member Ron Kouchi, former state circuit court Judge George “Spike” Matsunaga and long time board and commission member and all around status quo defender Phil Tachbian... and if they aren’t sycophantic enough of the status quo the alternate is the head of the Chamber of Commence, old boy in waiting Randall Francisco.
Their task?- to “recommend amendments to the rules”.
And these guys “ain’t the old boys”, as Chang was quoted as saying? Either Chang is obscenely disingenuous or lives in his own Wala`au world of naivety.
It is the ultimate absurdity. They want to appoint an opaque body, not subject to open meeting laws to hold a discussion and report on how to bring open government and transparency to the council. It’s a conversation that should be happening in open session, before the council, with public testimony, not behind closed doors with the sole input of three or four people who could never in anyone’s wildest imagination be confused with open governance and sunshine advocates.
Oh, did we mention there’s another measure?- a cryptic little ditty that no one who hasn’t been bulldogging this issue would notice or comprehend.
A few weeks back discussion at the council table centered around one of Bynum and Kawahara’s demands- that all materials that are addressed to councilmembers or are distributed to other councilmembers get to them in a timely manner and not be subject to the whims of County Clerk Peter Nakamura. At the time, County Attorney Al Castillo halted the discussion to say that any conversation criticizing Nakamura was a “personnel” discussion and must be held behind closed doors.
So this week there is an executive session scheduled to “consider the evaluation of officers and/or employees where consideration of matters affecting privacy will be involved and associated matters”. Note the absence of what the heck this is really specifically about- something required by the sunshine law
So, in a nutshell, what do we have?
First it was pure stonewalling in refusing to hear the specific rule changes that Bynum tried to introduced in June. Then when that partially failed and Kawahara found a strategy to get a “discussion” of the subjects on the agenda, they delayed as long as they could until tomorrow finally came around.
But in the interim they bogusly got the administration to announce that very limited council materials would be posted on the web site, lying about the supposed “year-long” efforts, including absurd excuses like the death of Bryan Baptiste and last year’s elections.
And now the latest scam- delaying any action for at least three months so three skilled obfuscators and defenders of the realm can go behind closed doors and decide how to, most likely not change the rules in any way except perhaps cosmetically.
Oh, and they’ve put discussion of the staff’s complicity behind closed doors. presumably including reforms as to the staff’s role in the effecting reform. Any discussion of the job Asing’s chief henchman Nakamura is doing goes into the black hole of executive session where it can be disposed of without a public whimper.
Who thinks this stuff up?
We’ve never seen a more politically complex “inside baseball” matter take hold of the community the way this one has. It apparently has touched an already exposed nerve of long-time frustration with the council.
If the chambers aren’t packed at 9 a.m. tomorrow we’ll actually be surprised and we rarely think people will really show up.
The surprising thing is that it’s not just the usual suspects who are fed up with Asing and the others if the outpouring from the community that usually votes back in the incumbents and likes the status quo just fine, thank you, is any indication.
As a matter of fact, even though the real underpinnings of the actual “conspiracy” are more than enough to raise ire, some people have gone wild with their own theories.
We heard this week- and we must say up front that we have absolutely no knowledge that this is true- that according to the scuttlebutt on the south side, “all of them”- Asing, the other four councilmembers, Ron Kouchi, Castillo, Planning Director Ian Costa, and all the rest of the Minotaurs’ minions- have regularly been seen coming and going at Ron Kouchi’s house, presumably meeting to plot strategy.
Obviously this is an imaginatory figment- it would be way too risky for them to illegally meet like that and frankly most of them haven’t got the political skills or intelligence to set that up much less come up with anything effective... as evidenced by the patently silliness of the two blocking measures on this week’s agenda indicate.
But we tell the story because it does show how people are finally finding out what’s been going on and are no longer unwilling to believe the crap that’s being shoveled their way
In fact, they have filled in their own conspiratorial blanks.
So send out the border guards, the kingdom is crumbling. If this time of no bread makes you yearn for the circus you could do worse than to be there at 9 a.m. tomorrow. They say there could be fireworks AND a dog and pony show.
As many have heard in the reams of e-mails flying about, Wednesday’s agenda includes two diametrically opposed items on the subjects of open governance and transparency that dissident councilmembers Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara forced into public scrutiny in June.
Not only is the promised “discussion” of the archaic council rules up for debate but, in response, the forces of darkness have led Councilpersons Jay Furfaro and his sidekick “nice guy” Dickie Chang to try to block any changes.
They’ve introduced a resolution asking the council to “appoint a special advisory committee” made up of three well known allies of Chair Kaipo “the Minotaur” Asing- charter members of the old boys network former Council Chair and long time member Ron Kouchi, former state circuit court Judge George “Spike” Matsunaga and long time board and commission member and all around status quo defender Phil Tachbian... and if they aren’t sycophantic enough of the status quo the alternate is the head of the Chamber of Commence, old boy in waiting Randall Francisco.
Their task?- to “recommend amendments to the rules”.
And these guys “ain’t the old boys”, as Chang was quoted as saying? Either Chang is obscenely disingenuous or lives in his own Wala`au world of naivety.
It is the ultimate absurdity. They want to appoint an opaque body, not subject to open meeting laws to hold a discussion and report on how to bring open government and transparency to the council. It’s a conversation that should be happening in open session, before the council, with public testimony, not behind closed doors with the sole input of three or four people who could never in anyone’s wildest imagination be confused with open governance and sunshine advocates.
Oh, did we mention there’s another measure?- a cryptic little ditty that no one who hasn’t been bulldogging this issue would notice or comprehend.
A few weeks back discussion at the council table centered around one of Bynum and Kawahara’s demands- that all materials that are addressed to councilmembers or are distributed to other councilmembers get to them in a timely manner and not be subject to the whims of County Clerk Peter Nakamura. At the time, County Attorney Al Castillo halted the discussion to say that any conversation criticizing Nakamura was a “personnel” discussion and must be held behind closed doors.
So this week there is an executive session scheduled to “consider the evaluation of officers and/or employees where consideration of matters affecting privacy will be involved and associated matters”. Note the absence of what the heck this is really specifically about- something required by the sunshine law
So, in a nutshell, what do we have?
First it was pure stonewalling in refusing to hear the specific rule changes that Bynum tried to introduced in June. Then when that partially failed and Kawahara found a strategy to get a “discussion” of the subjects on the agenda, they delayed as long as they could until tomorrow finally came around.
But in the interim they bogusly got the administration to announce that very limited council materials would be posted on the web site, lying about the supposed “year-long” efforts, including absurd excuses like the death of Bryan Baptiste and last year’s elections.
And now the latest scam- delaying any action for at least three months so three skilled obfuscators and defenders of the realm can go behind closed doors and decide how to, most likely not change the rules in any way except perhaps cosmetically.
Oh, and they’ve put discussion of the staff’s complicity behind closed doors. presumably including reforms as to the staff’s role in the effecting reform. Any discussion of the job Asing’s chief henchman Nakamura is doing goes into the black hole of executive session where it can be disposed of without a public whimper.
Who thinks this stuff up?
We’ve never seen a more politically complex “inside baseball” matter take hold of the community the way this one has. It apparently has touched an already exposed nerve of long-time frustration with the council.
If the chambers aren’t packed at 9 a.m. tomorrow we’ll actually be surprised and we rarely think people will really show up.
The surprising thing is that it’s not just the usual suspects who are fed up with Asing and the others if the outpouring from the community that usually votes back in the incumbents and likes the status quo just fine, thank you, is any indication.
As a matter of fact, even though the real underpinnings of the actual “conspiracy” are more than enough to raise ire, some people have gone wild with their own theories.
We heard this week- and we must say up front that we have absolutely no knowledge that this is true- that according to the scuttlebutt on the south side, “all of them”- Asing, the other four councilmembers, Ron Kouchi, Castillo, Planning Director Ian Costa, and all the rest of the Minotaurs’ minions- have regularly been seen coming and going at Ron Kouchi’s house, presumably meeting to plot strategy.
Obviously this is an imaginatory figment- it would be way too risky for them to illegally meet like that and frankly most of them haven’t got the political skills or intelligence to set that up much less come up with anything effective... as evidenced by the patently silliness of the two blocking measures on this week’s agenda indicate.
But we tell the story because it does show how people are finally finding out what’s been going on and are no longer unwilling to believe the crap that’s being shoveled their way
In fact, they have filled in their own conspiratorial blanks.
So send out the border guards, the kingdom is crumbling. If this time of no bread makes you yearn for the circus you could do worse than to be there at 9 a.m. tomorrow. They say there could be fireworks AND a dog and pony show.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
SHOCKED-SHOCKED... AND SHOCKED AGAIN
SHOCKED-SHOCKED... AND SHOCKED AGAIN: The Kaua`i Island Utility Coop (KIUC) election ballot is in members’ hands and Ben Sullivan is the only candidate worth a damn, as any number of local civic groups will tell you.
But while some are asking voters not to screw themselves by voting for any of the others- six power seeking pieces of crap such as perennial-candidate-for everything JoAnn Georgi who wants to build nuclear plants on the island- most fail to alert voters to the Kaua`i tradition of “plunking”- voting only for the one candidate you really want even if there are many slots to fill.
But before we started to kvetch about it we figured we’d better find out exactly how many slots are being filled this time since we don’t have a ballot in-hand.
Check the local newspaper? A lot of coverage of the candidates but no mention of how many slots are to be filled.
We don’t expect much from the local paper so we were sure all the information we could ever want would be prominently displayed at the KIUC web site, especially a sample ballot.
Guess again. Not only isn’t there a sample ballot anywhere at the web site, there’s no list at all on the main page or virtually any information at all regarding the election except buried in a “press release” where we find out there are indeed three slots open
Only under Press Releases, underneath the latest release entitled 2009 Board of Directors Election Candidates - 2/11/09 which does not contain the number of openings, is there a button for KIUC Nominating Committee Selects Candidates - 1/16/09 – containing the number of openings.
But we only started this search after receiving a phone call this weekend from someone who depends on us to let her know what’s going on with elections and who are the “good” candidates.
After we told her to vote only for Ben, she posed a question that really threw us for a loop asking “and what about the two by-law amendments?”
By-law amendments? Are you kidding? We’d like to think we’re pretty well informed scouring the local paper and blogs, talking to people on the phone and receiving emails from just about every advocacy and civic group on the island. Yet not a one we’ve seen has mentioned that there were going to be by-law changes proposed.
You wouldn’t know it either if you went to the KIUC web site. Only by the same hit and miss process of clicking on every button that we used to find the candidate information could we find information on the amendments... under a mysteriously labeled button saying Resolution 01-09 of the Board of Directors of KIUC.
There we found a long convoluted resolution in which, if you bother to scroll down through all sorts of whereas’s and herebys, you’ll get to this but of legalese that raises all sorts of questions
That the President and CEO is hereby authorized and directed to submit
said proposed amendments to the Association's Bylaws to a vote of the Membership on a Ballot substantially in the form of Exhibit "B", and to cause the exact text of the proposed amendments as set out in Exhibit "A" to be printed in the Voters Guide for the election, and cause a Exhibit "A" to be posted in prominent places on the premises of the Association and on the Association's internet website, and to otherwise publicize said changes as appropriate (emphasis added).
This little ditty was so prominently posted that it took us an hour to find it and another one to translate the legalese.
The two page resolution with the above blurb at the very end, was followed not by the actual changes to the bylaws, stated in a brief and succinct manner but with the changes occasionally interspersed throughout an 18 page document- aka Exhibit “A”- which contains the full text of all the bylaws.
At the very bottom of the 21 pages pdf document is an “explanation” of the changes, which actually are pretty innocuous, one seemingly a housekeeping measure and another that redefines what a “quorum” is for voting purposes to make sure that measures pass only when a “majority of the entire voting membership of the Board” votes yes rather than the current system where “half” is sufficient.
While rooting around in the KIUC muck-site we also found the minutes from the nominating committee which was headed by Carol Bain, former head of the League of Women Voters who was elected on a platform of bringing more transparency to the board.
We found that only three of the four people who had applied to be nominated by the nominating committee were approved with Patrick “Pat” Gegen failing for some reason to make the grade. We say “for some reason” because there is nothing in the minutes to indicate why exactly Gegen was rejected.
We hate to conjecture (ok we love it) but it could be because Gegen is not a part of the old boy network that, another press release tell us, was quite well represented on the nominating committee where at least two of the four “non-directors” that were appointed were tenured members of the corrupt revolving-door cabal that runs between the county government and the private sector.
One is the infamous Cesar Portugal former County Engineer whose sister’s plumbing company was seemly exempt from regulations during his tenure and who was, as head of Pubic Works Department, MaryAnn Kusaka’s chief apologist during the grubbing and grading scandals of the late ‘90’s and early ‘00’s and was implicated in Kusaka’s “protection” of accused murderer Jimmy Pflueger from inquiry into the violations that led to the deaths of seven people in the Ka Loko Dam break.
The other is Mike Tresler, the former head of the Department of Finance and current VP in charge of schmoozing the county at land baron Grove Farm. Tresler was complicit in firing of former chief of Police KC Lum when he apparently illegally attempted to cancel his contract during the conspiratorial witchhunt, as detailed in the book KPD Blue.
As usual with KIUC since it’s inception, despite lip service to transparent and democratic governance the board of KIUC has consistently shown itself to be just another cog in labyrinth of the Minotaurs characterized by the plantation mentality and cozy corruption that maintains Kaua`i as “A Separate Kingdom”.
But while some are asking voters not to screw themselves by voting for any of the others- six power seeking pieces of crap such as perennial-candidate-for everything JoAnn Georgi who wants to build nuclear plants on the island- most fail to alert voters to the Kaua`i tradition of “plunking”- voting only for the one candidate you really want even if there are many slots to fill.
But before we started to kvetch about it we figured we’d better find out exactly how many slots are being filled this time since we don’t have a ballot in-hand.
Check the local newspaper? A lot of coverage of the candidates but no mention of how many slots are to be filled.
We don’t expect much from the local paper so we were sure all the information we could ever want would be prominently displayed at the KIUC web site, especially a sample ballot.
Guess again. Not only isn’t there a sample ballot anywhere at the web site, there’s no list at all on the main page or virtually any information at all regarding the election except buried in a “press release” where we find out there are indeed three slots open
Only under Press Releases, underneath the latest release entitled 2009 Board of Directors Election Candidates - 2/11/09 which does not contain the number of openings, is there a button for KIUC Nominating Committee Selects Candidates - 1/16/09 – containing the number of openings.
But we only started this search after receiving a phone call this weekend from someone who depends on us to let her know what’s going on with elections and who are the “good” candidates.
After we told her to vote only for Ben, she posed a question that really threw us for a loop asking “and what about the two by-law amendments?”
By-law amendments? Are you kidding? We’d like to think we’re pretty well informed scouring the local paper and blogs, talking to people on the phone and receiving emails from just about every advocacy and civic group on the island. Yet not a one we’ve seen has mentioned that there were going to be by-law changes proposed.
You wouldn’t know it either if you went to the KIUC web site. Only by the same hit and miss process of clicking on every button that we used to find the candidate information could we find information on the amendments... under a mysteriously labeled button saying Resolution 01-09 of the Board of Directors of KIUC.
There we found a long convoluted resolution in which, if you bother to scroll down through all sorts of whereas’s and herebys, you’ll get to this but of legalese that raises all sorts of questions
That the President and CEO is hereby authorized and directed to submit
said proposed amendments to the Association's Bylaws to a vote of the Membership on a Ballot substantially in the form of Exhibit "B", and to cause the exact text of the proposed amendments as set out in Exhibit "A" to be printed in the Voters Guide for the election, and cause a Exhibit "A" to be posted in prominent places on the premises of the Association and on the Association's internet website, and to otherwise publicize said changes as appropriate (emphasis added).
This little ditty was so prominently posted that it took us an hour to find it and another one to translate the legalese.
The two page resolution with the above blurb at the very end, was followed not by the actual changes to the bylaws, stated in a brief and succinct manner but with the changes occasionally interspersed throughout an 18 page document- aka Exhibit “A”- which contains the full text of all the bylaws.
At the very bottom of the 21 pages pdf document is an “explanation” of the changes, which actually are pretty innocuous, one seemingly a housekeeping measure and another that redefines what a “quorum” is for voting purposes to make sure that measures pass only when a “majority of the entire voting membership of the Board” votes yes rather than the current system where “half” is sufficient.
While rooting around in the KIUC muck-site we also found the minutes from the nominating committee which was headed by Carol Bain, former head of the League of Women Voters who was elected on a platform of bringing more transparency to the board.
We found that only three of the four people who had applied to be nominated by the nominating committee were approved with Patrick “Pat” Gegen failing for some reason to make the grade. We say “for some reason” because there is nothing in the minutes to indicate why exactly Gegen was rejected.
We hate to conjecture (ok we love it) but it could be because Gegen is not a part of the old boy network that, another press release tell us, was quite well represented on the nominating committee where at least two of the four “non-directors” that were appointed were tenured members of the corrupt revolving-door cabal that runs between the county government and the private sector.
One is the infamous Cesar Portugal former County Engineer whose sister’s plumbing company was seemly exempt from regulations during his tenure and who was, as head of Pubic Works Department, MaryAnn Kusaka’s chief apologist during the grubbing and grading scandals of the late ‘90’s and early ‘00’s and was implicated in Kusaka’s “protection” of accused murderer Jimmy Pflueger from inquiry into the violations that led to the deaths of seven people in the Ka Loko Dam break.
The other is Mike Tresler, the former head of the Department of Finance and current VP in charge of schmoozing the county at land baron Grove Farm. Tresler was complicit in firing of former chief of Police KC Lum when he apparently illegally attempted to cancel his contract during the conspiratorial witchhunt, as detailed in the book KPD Blue.
As usual with KIUC since it’s inception, despite lip service to transparent and democratic governance the board of KIUC has consistently shown itself to be just another cog in labyrinth of the Minotaurs characterized by the plantation mentality and cozy corruption that maintains Kaua`i as “A Separate Kingdom”.
Monday, November 1, 2010
A FINAL WORD
A FINAL WORD: Kaua`i has never been much of a place for the “October surprise”. While whispering campaigns have been few and far between we can’t even remember a last minute revelation about a candidate in print.
But last week’s excoriation of Tim Bynum by our friend Joan Conrow contained not just her reasons for not voting for Tim- many of which we agreed with- but reported one tidbit about Bynum that we had been trying to find out more about for the last month or so.
Joan starts out by saying
When Tim finally did get elected, in 2006, I was hearing a lot of talk about how we — as in mainland haoles — needed to elect a haole to represent our interests on the Council and fight the “old boy” system. They saw Tim as "the great white hope."
Of course, Tim is actually a product of that very same system, seeing as how he was appointed by the late Mayor Baptiste to run the totally worthless, do-nothing county “outreach” program known as Ka Leo O Kauai — a position Tim lists as Community Response Specialist on his resume.
Though we never saw Tim as such, for just that reason- in addition to his involvement with the bike path as Joan also cites- it’s hard to see how being a crony of Baptiste’s is compatible with being “the great white hope”, as Joan says.
And more than fair criticism was the fact that Bynum extensively talks about the horrors of how our ag land has been subdivided and condominiumized (CPRs) into gentlemen’s estates but built his house on CPRed ag land.
Then of course there’s his transient vacation rental (TVR) bill which weakened the 2008 bill that banned new TVRs on residentially zoned lands and opened up ag lands to TVRs, which were banned under the original bill.
We aren’t the only ones for whom that was the tipping point on whether to give Tim our support tomorrow so no disagreement there.
But then comes the story that we’ve been chasing since Ken Taylor raised it during a council meeting a while back.
What Tim fails to mention is that he himself bought a lot in one of those pretend farm developments, built a house and let someone graze a horse in the yard to further the pretense.
What's more, he is the subject of a formal complaint alleging that he’s been operating an illegal dwelling unit within his single-family residence. However, when a county inspector went to check it out, Tim refused to give him access to the house — even though he had signed a use permit agreeing to periodic inspections. Tim also failed to respond to numerous susequent (sic) written requests for access. As a result, Tim was issued a zoning compliance notice and the county will seek a search warrant to conduct the inspection.
Wow. No wonder Tim wouldn’t answer our emails asking him for clarification. We asked Conrow if she had a copy of what should be a publicly available complaint, especially in light of one comments which said,
The rumor is that Tim was set up by a trespassing planning inspector who was probably there at the request of one of the mean three (K.A., M.R. and S.I.C) and who tried to accuse him of having an illegal kitchen for having a coffee maker plugged in a bedroom or something ridiculous like that. If that is true (I'd like to know before the election) it would seem like a political dirty trick aimed at getting an uninformed media to ruin his election chances.
We certainly would like to know the source of the complaint but haven’t as yet heard back from Joan. We certainly trust Joan’s reporting and would like to hear Bynum’s side of the story. Our question is in the timing of the report and the wisdom of publishing it in the middle of a piece with such obvious animus.
But then Joan says something that baffled us.
This sort of refusal has happened only once before, by a man who had 20 unpermitted houses on his property, and it's certainly surprising to such behavior in someone sworn to uphold the law. Normally, people want to give an inspector access to show they're in compliance. Unless, of course, they're not. Perhaps that's why Tim never replied when I asked him for a comment.
Only once before? Hasn’t Joan followed the stories about people like Jimmy Pflueger and Tom McCloskey as well as other “Friends of Maryanne” Kusaka who refused entry to Department of Public Works (DPW) and Planning inspectors until Kusaka allegedly told them to back off?
This has been a huge issue for both DPW and the Planning Department with both County Engineer Donald Fujimoto (and his predecessors) and Planning Director Ian Costa who have bitterly complained over and over on specific cases- on the record at planning and council meetings- that they have been denied entry to people’s properties and have begged for a law which allows them to gain entry administratively.
But then comes the criticism that makes us think that if Joan had watched the council in action she might have gotten a different impression.
In further supposed support for farming, Tim recently introduced three bills related to agricultural lands. But because he has failed so miserably at consensus-building (another one of his campaign pledges), the Council nixed them immediately. However, his oft-stated quest to reduce density on ag land — which would hit family farms hardest — instilled sufficient fear in some large ag land owners that they moved to lock in their density, including CPRs, while they could. As a result, speculator/developer Tom McCloskey now has 1,000 units all lined up and ready to go in Kealia.
Actually those bills were first introduced by Mayor Bryan Baptiste years ago and McCloskey has had his units “all lined up” for years.
But to blame the obstructionism of those who are letting some personal revenge factor on the target of their ire is pretty tea-partyish. And, as a matter of fact, talking to more than one other councilperson about a bill before it is introduced is highly illegal.
After justifiably criticizing the thousand dollars in campaign funds from the Transient Vacation Rental Association Conrow then says something that we can’t fathom, especially from a journalist who deals in documents and should know how important access to them as well as transparency and accountability in government is.
All in all, it's pretty hypocritical for someone who wrote, in his response to the previously mentioned questionnaire:
I believe that public participation in government is essential, and helps us make better decisions. For that reason I have tried to improve the public process, specifically by advocating for easy access to public documents, release of county attorney opinions of Law, and public broadcast of all council proceedings — including budget hearings. Frankly, I am dismayed that this has been contentious and difficult.
Perhaps it was contentious and difficult because Tim, who was later joined by Lani, never sat down with the Council Chair or sought support from other Councilmembers to work out such a change. Instead, they turned it into a self-serving and very public crusade of “us against them,” making a mockery of his campaign pledge to “strive for consensus.”
If Joan had actually viewed all the meetings on the topic rather than relying on the notoriously inept reporting in the local newspaper, she would have known that Bynum repeatedly tried to meet with Chair Kaipo Asing’s despite Asing denial- that is until Tim produced the document requesting a meeting and that it was Lani, relying on Tim who was introducing the needed changes- who didn’t meet with Asing.
While we have many reasons to withhold support for Bynum this year- and it was not an easy decision for just this reason- his fight for access to the agenda for councilmembers and the posting of public documents on-line as well as many other instances of abuse of the rules and process by Asing (as we’ve detailed over and over) was the one high points of this council term.
To blame those who fight for positive change in the face of paternalistic intransigence for “not striving for consensus” is the reason why Asing and the three D’s- Derek, Dickie and Darryl- got away with their obstructionism.
And guess what- the subject documents are still not posted on-line.
But the reason why it sticks in our craw is because it’s not just Joan who seems to take this attitude.
Way too often we hear from candidates- and from voters- that we need to “all get along” and “stop all the fighting.”
But those blaming people who fight hindrances and impediments to change thrown up by the forces of the broken status quo seem to have very little understanding of what open governance really means.
Is that what you want?.. politicians “seeking consensus” in back rooms rather than before the public at a meeting, as provided in the sunshine law?
Bynum’s and Kawahara’s crusade for accountability and transparency and access to documents should not be the subject of closed door meetings- the antithesis of the spirit- and letter- of the law.
This type of criticism assures that nothing will ever change except for assuring that, when those who challenge corruption and the old boys’ control over the process are turned out of office, the next politician won’t fail to get the “sit down and shut up” message.
And as long as politically astute progressives buy into this Kumbaya form of governance the Minotaurs and their minions will continue to control access to “our” government.
But last week’s excoriation of Tim Bynum by our friend Joan Conrow contained not just her reasons for not voting for Tim- many of which we agreed with- but reported one tidbit about Bynum that we had been trying to find out more about for the last month or so.
Joan starts out by saying
When Tim finally did get elected, in 2006, I was hearing a lot of talk about how we — as in mainland haoles — needed to elect a haole to represent our interests on the Council and fight the “old boy” system. They saw Tim as "the great white hope."
Of course, Tim is actually a product of that very same system, seeing as how he was appointed by the late Mayor Baptiste to run the totally worthless, do-nothing county “outreach” program known as Ka Leo O Kauai — a position Tim lists as Community Response Specialist on his resume.
Though we never saw Tim as such, for just that reason- in addition to his involvement with the bike path as Joan also cites- it’s hard to see how being a crony of Baptiste’s is compatible with being “the great white hope”, as Joan says.
And more than fair criticism was the fact that Bynum extensively talks about the horrors of how our ag land has been subdivided and condominiumized (CPRs) into gentlemen’s estates but built his house on CPRed ag land.
Then of course there’s his transient vacation rental (TVR) bill which weakened the 2008 bill that banned new TVRs on residentially zoned lands and opened up ag lands to TVRs, which were banned under the original bill.
We aren’t the only ones for whom that was the tipping point on whether to give Tim our support tomorrow so no disagreement there.
But then comes the story that we’ve been chasing since Ken Taylor raised it during a council meeting a while back.
What Tim fails to mention is that he himself bought a lot in one of those pretend farm developments, built a house and let someone graze a horse in the yard to further the pretense.
What's more, he is the subject of a formal complaint alleging that he’s been operating an illegal dwelling unit within his single-family residence. However, when a county inspector went to check it out, Tim refused to give him access to the house — even though he had signed a use permit agreeing to periodic inspections. Tim also failed to respond to numerous susequent (sic) written requests for access. As a result, Tim was issued a zoning compliance notice and the county will seek a search warrant to conduct the inspection.
Wow. No wonder Tim wouldn’t answer our emails asking him for clarification. We asked Conrow if she had a copy of what should be a publicly available complaint, especially in light of one comments which said,
The rumor is that Tim was set up by a trespassing planning inspector who was probably there at the request of one of the mean three (K.A., M.R. and S.I.C) and who tried to accuse him of having an illegal kitchen for having a coffee maker plugged in a bedroom or something ridiculous like that. If that is true (I'd like to know before the election) it would seem like a political dirty trick aimed at getting an uninformed media to ruin his election chances.
We certainly would like to know the source of the complaint but haven’t as yet heard back from Joan. We certainly trust Joan’s reporting and would like to hear Bynum’s side of the story. Our question is in the timing of the report and the wisdom of publishing it in the middle of a piece with such obvious animus.
But then Joan says something that baffled us.
This sort of refusal has happened only once before, by a man who had 20 unpermitted houses on his property, and it's certainly surprising to such behavior in someone sworn to uphold the law. Normally, people want to give an inspector access to show they're in compliance. Unless, of course, they're not. Perhaps that's why Tim never replied when I asked him for a comment.
Only once before? Hasn’t Joan followed the stories about people like Jimmy Pflueger and Tom McCloskey as well as other “Friends of Maryanne” Kusaka who refused entry to Department of Public Works (DPW) and Planning inspectors until Kusaka allegedly told them to back off?
This has been a huge issue for both DPW and the Planning Department with both County Engineer Donald Fujimoto (and his predecessors) and Planning Director Ian Costa who have bitterly complained over and over on specific cases- on the record at planning and council meetings- that they have been denied entry to people’s properties and have begged for a law which allows them to gain entry administratively.
But then comes the criticism that makes us think that if Joan had watched the council in action she might have gotten a different impression.
In further supposed support for farming, Tim recently introduced three bills related to agricultural lands. But because he has failed so miserably at consensus-building (another one of his campaign pledges), the Council nixed them immediately. However, his oft-stated quest to reduce density on ag land — which would hit family farms hardest — instilled sufficient fear in some large ag land owners that they moved to lock in their density, including CPRs, while they could. As a result, speculator/developer Tom McCloskey now has 1,000 units all lined up and ready to go in Kealia.
Actually those bills were first introduced by Mayor Bryan Baptiste years ago and McCloskey has had his units “all lined up” for years.
But to blame the obstructionism of those who are letting some personal revenge factor on the target of their ire is pretty tea-partyish. And, as a matter of fact, talking to more than one other councilperson about a bill before it is introduced is highly illegal.
After justifiably criticizing the thousand dollars in campaign funds from the Transient Vacation Rental Association Conrow then says something that we can’t fathom, especially from a journalist who deals in documents and should know how important access to them as well as transparency and accountability in government is.
All in all, it's pretty hypocritical for someone who wrote, in his response to the previously mentioned questionnaire:
I believe that public participation in government is essential, and helps us make better decisions. For that reason I have tried to improve the public process, specifically by advocating for easy access to public documents, release of county attorney opinions of Law, and public broadcast of all council proceedings — including budget hearings. Frankly, I am dismayed that this has been contentious and difficult.
Perhaps it was contentious and difficult because Tim, who was later joined by Lani, never sat down with the Council Chair or sought support from other Councilmembers to work out such a change. Instead, they turned it into a self-serving and very public crusade of “us against them,” making a mockery of his campaign pledge to “strive for consensus.”
If Joan had actually viewed all the meetings on the topic rather than relying on the notoriously inept reporting in the local newspaper, she would have known that Bynum repeatedly tried to meet with Chair Kaipo Asing’s despite Asing denial- that is until Tim produced the document requesting a meeting and that it was Lani, relying on Tim who was introducing the needed changes- who didn’t meet with Asing.
While we have many reasons to withhold support for Bynum this year- and it was not an easy decision for just this reason- his fight for access to the agenda for councilmembers and the posting of public documents on-line as well as many other instances of abuse of the rules and process by Asing (as we’ve detailed over and over) was the one high points of this council term.
To blame those who fight for positive change in the face of paternalistic intransigence for “not striving for consensus” is the reason why Asing and the three D’s- Derek, Dickie and Darryl- got away with their obstructionism.
And guess what- the subject documents are still not posted on-line.
But the reason why it sticks in our craw is because it’s not just Joan who seems to take this attitude.
Way too often we hear from candidates- and from voters- that we need to “all get along” and “stop all the fighting.”
But those blaming people who fight hindrances and impediments to change thrown up by the forces of the broken status quo seem to have very little understanding of what open governance really means.
Is that what you want?.. politicians “seeking consensus” in back rooms rather than before the public at a meeting, as provided in the sunshine law?
Bynum’s and Kawahara’s crusade for accountability and transparency and access to documents should not be the subject of closed door meetings- the antithesis of the spirit- and letter- of the law.
This type of criticism assures that nothing will ever change except for assuring that, when those who challenge corruption and the old boys’ control over the process are turned out of office, the next politician won’t fail to get the “sit down and shut up” message.
And as long as politically astute progressives buy into this Kumbaya form of governance the Minotaurs and their minions will continue to control access to “our” government.
Friday, March 20, 2009
USED GUIDE DOG FOR SALE
USED GUIDE DOG FOR SALE: How could we all have been so wrong for so long?
It’s painfully obvious now that conclusions, even though based on the reams of data, that the Hawai`i Superferry (HSf) was nothing but a demonstration prototype for a new class of military war ships were nothing but the rantings of a bunch of stupid hippie environmentalists grasping at straws.
The illumination came directly from an unimpeachable source- Superferry president and chief executive officer- and former Navy Admiral- Thomas Fargo who would certainly have no reason to lie to or BS anyone.
Barely choking back crocodile tears, before the “final voyage” of the Superferry, Fargo set everyone straight.
According to the Honolulu Advertiser:
Fargo, after mentioning that the military might want to lease the Alakai, addressed speculation by some activists who have opposed the project that Superferry was designed from the start as a military operation.
"That's absolutely not true," said Fargo, a former Navy admiral. "We certainly wouldn't have gone to the trouble to paint Alakai in the manner that we did, to appoint her with 836 first-class seats, to spend the huge sums of money that we did to establish service here in Hawaii if that was our goal.
"The goal that's unmistakable was to provide regular and reliable commercial ferry service in these Islands."
And, in a phone interview directly from the deck of the boat with the local Kaua`i paper’s Michael Levine, Fargo let us misinformed misanthropes know that this was no causal remark.
Levine says:
Asked about the possibility that the Alakai would be sold to the military, Fargo took umbrage at the implication that it the Superferry was designed for military purposes all along.
“I want to make one thing perfectly clear because this has been misunderstood from the get-go. All these theories that it had something to do with the military are bogus,” he said. “We wouldn’t have painted, branded, and carpeted (the ship), put 831 first-class seats and spent all this money if we wanted to lease it to the military. That logic is absolutely flawed. The conspiracy theories ... are a bunch of baloney.”
Of course- how could we have been so blind? All we had to do was look at the paint job. It was right on the boat... “Hawai`i Superferry”. obviously if it were really for military use it would have said “War Ship Prototype- Military Boondoggle”.
And whose ever heard of painting over anything- that lettering was obviously done with permanent paint. It must have cost at least, why, hundreds of dollars to paint the words and logo on an almost $400 million boat.
Of course those seats couldn’t serve anyone else but ferry passengers. They quite obviously are irremovably and permanently embedded on the ship. Those “first class appointments” could only serve civilians because, as everyone knows, soldiers always stand at attention and never sit down.
But the carpeting- well that cinches it. That stuff is impossible to replace. And who would want to with all the vomit stains?
Apparently we were just bamboozled by these awful conspiracy theorists. because, well Fargo says it was all a “bunch of baloney” and what possible reason would we have to not take a Superferry official at their word?
It’s all falling into place now.
It was apparently just a coincidence that back in 2000 Hawai`i Senator Daniel Inouye and Senator and convicted felon Ted Stevens of Alaska “earmarked” $10 million to study the feasibility of high-speed large-capacity ferries in Hawai`i and Alaska at the very same time when, as the ranking member of the Senate Armed services committee, he was first considering Navy plans for a new fleet of high speed large capacity vessels virtually indistinguishable from the ferry- a plan which called for spending 10’s of billions on the war ships that were yet to be designed or built.
Then, it certainly wasn’t in anticipation of cashing in when Australian ship builder set up shop in Mobile Alabama where they could compete to design and build the military vessels because, unlike ferries, the war ships had to be built in America.
They came to build us a ferry.
The fact that the ferry was the first aluminum-hulled, high-speed vessel of that size and with a catamaran design- identical to the description the Navy used for their proposed project- was quite obviously part of a fallacious post hoc- proctor hoc argument by anti US military commies.
Austal was obviously only coming to the US because they love Americans so much and just wanted to come and build a ferry for Hawai`i, even if their initial investment in setting up the ship was many times the amount the ferry cost and there was no contract in place for even the ferry. Why everyone knows that all corporations like Austal are really just benevolent public service organizations and don’t ever consider anything based purely on profit motive.
Of course it was just a happy coincidence that the first and only major funding for the ferry came from former Navy Secretary John Lehman. Because it was certainly of no note at all that congressional records show that they were reluctant to spend a nickel on the new design because they didn’t know if it would really be able to stand up to shallow water and close shore maneuvering... or for that matter if the unique design would even float.
It’s all too clear that the real story is the original story. The one they’ve told all along and are “sticking to” today as they ready the ship for military use: some guy who had never heard of high-speed high-capacity ferries identical to the Navy’s design went to Europe, saw a ferry and said “I’m gonna run an outlandishly big, untested and never-built-before ferry to go between islands in Hawai`i”.
The fact that he had no background in ferries, mutli-hundred-million dollar businesses or any money personally to invest is irrelevant. It had to work because he was “an entrepreneur”.
This could never have been just a cover story in anyone’s wildest dreams- even though Inouye had already appropriated the money for the study before the idea was even proposed and was one of the first to immediately support the idea.
Why even Superferry opponents like Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander say that’s the true origin of the HSf, as they wrote over and over in their book “The Superferry Chronicles”. Who are we to question the story if they bought it?.... It doesn’t matter that almost every bit of information cited in the book came from secondary and tertiary rather than original sources.
Now we know it’s the only thing in the book they got right.
It’s obvious the whole project was and always has been driven forward solely in the name of serving the people of Hawai`i. The fact that Lehman et. al. put pressure on the federal government to demand an exemption from state mandated environmental studies before they would guarantee a loan had nothing to do with the urgency to move the project forward and get the boat in the water as quickly as possible to show congress that the “ferry” would withstand actual service.... that’s would be just preposterous
What possible motivation, other than helping people to take their car and travel to see their auntie on another island, could a former Secretary of the Navy have had?
And certainly it was just because Governor Linda Lingle really liked the Superferry honcho John Garibaldi so much that she risked and eventually destroyed her political career to pressure the state bureaucrats to acquiesce to flouting the law in order to rush an oversized, biggest-ferry-in-the-world into service... despite the fact that it was comparatively horribly expensive to operate and had unless capacity... not to mention the sticker shocking price.
Why all that sucking up to people dealing in multi billion-dollar contracts could never result in a lucrative position when Lingle term-limits run out in 2010. Because pols who make corrupt decisions and show themselves to be willing cogs in a boondoggle never get rewarded with multi-million dollar revolving door consulting jobs after leaving office
It was all just speculation when articles appeared in the military-contracting trade magazines quoting Austal officials, U.S. congressional members and military planners talking about wanting to see how the HSf stands up to use before they go forward with the new class of Navy ships based on that almost identical design. After all, everyone knows that trade magazines like that that people rely on to make billion dollar investments are all just opinion rags.
Just because it was the first one and sailed around for a year before congress and Senator Inouye- now chair of the armed forces appropriation sub committee- allowed the project to start slowly going forward doesn’t mean a thing.
And we all know how dumb Lehman, Inouye, Fargo and everyone else involved are. They would never have been smart enough to plot to operate for a year or so without an EIS for a boat that any moron could tell you would severely effect the environment in ways that can’t be mitigated (especially at zero cost for infrastructural support).
They could never have schemed to nix the studies so they could pull out, sell the boat to the military and sue the state for letting them do it when the courts unanimously laughed at the state’s attempts to con everyone.
The fact that they ignored the first Supreme Court ruling as long as they could- and then got the legislature to illegally let them show off the boat by running it for a year while opponents went back to court- yet this time after the recent ruling they shut down on a dime, doesn’t mean a thing.
The record shows that they are obviously just good citizens who always respect the law and the court rulings.
Why how could they have foreseen that they would get to operate long enough to show the boats viability then get nixed by the courts?... you’d have to believe they have ESP or are psychic.
We all know that senators and military-contracting ex-admirals would never be able plot anything so complex.
And anyway, they would never scam idiotic twits like Lingle, Attorney General Bennett and most of the members of the state legislature. No one would do that just for money- why it would be wrong and the military never does anything wrong- just think of how righteous the Vietnam and Iraq wars were.
Besides, they had no way of knowing that there were plenty of greedy, self-centered mainland marauders living in Honolulu who would jump at the chance to treat the environmentally sensitive and infrastructure-poor neighbor islands like their personal playground and toilet and plunder the resources, trash the place and go home.
Why Americans can always be counted on to put their own self-interest aside and do what’s for the good of others. When people ask them not to overrun and despoil someone else’s neck of the woods Americans never just call them NIMBY’s, push them aside and take what they want with no regard for anyone but themselves.
So they certainly couldn’t count on all that happening. It was just a happy coincidence that the greedy pigs put on enough political pressure to force the state’s Minotaurs at the legislature and in the administration to do what was wrong as long as they could.
Yup- Fargo has opened everyone’s eyes to our silly evidence-based conclusions.
We who thought there was ever any connection between the Hawai`i Superferry Inc. and the military simply made the common mistake of believing’ our own lyin’ eyes instead of the words of those always trustworthy PR hacks and corrupt military personnel and contractors.
Even though their wieners are out and there’s a distinct and overpowering pissy stench of ammonia coming from our feet, apparently it’s just raining.
It’s painfully obvious now that conclusions, even though based on the reams of data, that the Hawai`i Superferry (HSf) was nothing but a demonstration prototype for a new class of military war ships were nothing but the rantings of a bunch of stupid hippie environmentalists grasping at straws.
The illumination came directly from an unimpeachable source- Superferry president and chief executive officer- and former Navy Admiral- Thomas Fargo who would certainly have no reason to lie to or BS anyone.
Barely choking back crocodile tears, before the “final voyage” of the Superferry, Fargo set everyone straight.
According to the Honolulu Advertiser:
Fargo, after mentioning that the military might want to lease the Alakai, addressed speculation by some activists who have opposed the project that Superferry was designed from the start as a military operation.
"That's absolutely not true," said Fargo, a former Navy admiral. "We certainly wouldn't have gone to the trouble to paint Alakai in the manner that we did, to appoint her with 836 first-class seats, to spend the huge sums of money that we did to establish service here in Hawaii if that was our goal.
"The goal that's unmistakable was to provide regular and reliable commercial ferry service in these Islands."
And, in a phone interview directly from the deck of the boat with the local Kaua`i paper’s Michael Levine, Fargo let us misinformed misanthropes know that this was no causal remark.
Levine says:
Asked about the possibility that the Alakai would be sold to the military, Fargo took umbrage at the implication that it the Superferry was designed for military purposes all along.
“I want to make one thing perfectly clear because this has been misunderstood from the get-go. All these theories that it had something to do with the military are bogus,” he said. “We wouldn’t have painted, branded, and carpeted (the ship), put 831 first-class seats and spent all this money if we wanted to lease it to the military. That logic is absolutely flawed. The conspiracy theories ... are a bunch of baloney.”
Of course- how could we have been so blind? All we had to do was look at the paint job. It was right on the boat... “Hawai`i Superferry”. obviously if it were really for military use it would have said “War Ship Prototype- Military Boondoggle”.
And whose ever heard of painting over anything- that lettering was obviously done with permanent paint. It must have cost at least, why, hundreds of dollars to paint the words and logo on an almost $400 million boat.
Of course those seats couldn’t serve anyone else but ferry passengers. They quite obviously are irremovably and permanently embedded on the ship. Those “first class appointments” could only serve civilians because, as everyone knows, soldiers always stand at attention and never sit down.
But the carpeting- well that cinches it. That stuff is impossible to replace. And who would want to with all the vomit stains?
Apparently we were just bamboozled by these awful conspiracy theorists. because, well Fargo says it was all a “bunch of baloney” and what possible reason would we have to not take a Superferry official at their word?
It’s all falling into place now.
It was apparently just a coincidence that back in 2000 Hawai`i Senator Daniel Inouye and Senator and convicted felon Ted Stevens of Alaska “earmarked” $10 million to study the feasibility of high-speed large-capacity ferries in Hawai`i and Alaska at the very same time when, as the ranking member of the Senate Armed services committee, he was first considering Navy plans for a new fleet of high speed large capacity vessels virtually indistinguishable from the ferry- a plan which called for spending 10’s of billions on the war ships that were yet to be designed or built.
Then, it certainly wasn’t in anticipation of cashing in when Australian ship builder set up shop in Mobile Alabama where they could compete to design and build the military vessels because, unlike ferries, the war ships had to be built in America.
They came to build us a ferry.
The fact that the ferry was the first aluminum-hulled, high-speed vessel of that size and with a catamaran design- identical to the description the Navy used for their proposed project- was quite obviously part of a fallacious post hoc- proctor hoc argument by anti US military commies.
Austal was obviously only coming to the US because they love Americans so much and just wanted to come and build a ferry for Hawai`i, even if their initial investment in setting up the ship was many times the amount the ferry cost and there was no contract in place for even the ferry. Why everyone knows that all corporations like Austal are really just benevolent public service organizations and don’t ever consider anything based purely on profit motive.
Of course it was just a happy coincidence that the first and only major funding for the ferry came from former Navy Secretary John Lehman. Because it was certainly of no note at all that congressional records show that they were reluctant to spend a nickel on the new design because they didn’t know if it would really be able to stand up to shallow water and close shore maneuvering... or for that matter if the unique design would even float.
It’s all too clear that the real story is the original story. The one they’ve told all along and are “sticking to” today as they ready the ship for military use: some guy who had never heard of high-speed high-capacity ferries identical to the Navy’s design went to Europe, saw a ferry and said “I’m gonna run an outlandishly big, untested and never-built-before ferry to go between islands in Hawai`i”.
The fact that he had no background in ferries, mutli-hundred-million dollar businesses or any money personally to invest is irrelevant. It had to work because he was “an entrepreneur”.
This could never have been just a cover story in anyone’s wildest dreams- even though Inouye had already appropriated the money for the study before the idea was even proposed and was one of the first to immediately support the idea.
Why even Superferry opponents like Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander say that’s the true origin of the HSf, as they wrote over and over in their book “The Superferry Chronicles”. Who are we to question the story if they bought it?.... It doesn’t matter that almost every bit of information cited in the book came from secondary and tertiary rather than original sources.
Now we know it’s the only thing in the book they got right.
It’s obvious the whole project was and always has been driven forward solely in the name of serving the people of Hawai`i. The fact that Lehman et. al. put pressure on the federal government to demand an exemption from state mandated environmental studies before they would guarantee a loan had nothing to do with the urgency to move the project forward and get the boat in the water as quickly as possible to show congress that the “ferry” would withstand actual service.... that’s would be just preposterous
What possible motivation, other than helping people to take their car and travel to see their auntie on another island, could a former Secretary of the Navy have had?
And certainly it was just because Governor Linda Lingle really liked the Superferry honcho John Garibaldi so much that she risked and eventually destroyed her political career to pressure the state bureaucrats to acquiesce to flouting the law in order to rush an oversized, biggest-ferry-in-the-world into service... despite the fact that it was comparatively horribly expensive to operate and had unless capacity... not to mention the sticker shocking price.
Why all that sucking up to people dealing in multi billion-dollar contracts could never result in a lucrative position when Lingle term-limits run out in 2010. Because pols who make corrupt decisions and show themselves to be willing cogs in a boondoggle never get rewarded with multi-million dollar revolving door consulting jobs after leaving office
It was all just speculation when articles appeared in the military-contracting trade magazines quoting Austal officials, U.S. congressional members and military planners talking about wanting to see how the HSf stands up to use before they go forward with the new class of Navy ships based on that almost identical design. After all, everyone knows that trade magazines like that that people rely on to make billion dollar investments are all just opinion rags.
Just because it was the first one and sailed around for a year before congress and Senator Inouye- now chair of the armed forces appropriation sub committee- allowed the project to start slowly going forward doesn’t mean a thing.
And we all know how dumb Lehman, Inouye, Fargo and everyone else involved are. They would never have been smart enough to plot to operate for a year or so without an EIS for a boat that any moron could tell you would severely effect the environment in ways that can’t be mitigated (especially at zero cost for infrastructural support).
They could never have schemed to nix the studies so they could pull out, sell the boat to the military and sue the state for letting them do it when the courts unanimously laughed at the state’s attempts to con everyone.
The fact that they ignored the first Supreme Court ruling as long as they could- and then got the legislature to illegally let them show off the boat by running it for a year while opponents went back to court- yet this time after the recent ruling they shut down on a dime, doesn’t mean a thing.
The record shows that they are obviously just good citizens who always respect the law and the court rulings.
Why how could they have foreseen that they would get to operate long enough to show the boats viability then get nixed by the courts?... you’d have to believe they have ESP or are psychic.
We all know that senators and military-contracting ex-admirals would never be able plot anything so complex.
And anyway, they would never scam idiotic twits like Lingle, Attorney General Bennett and most of the members of the state legislature. No one would do that just for money- why it would be wrong and the military never does anything wrong- just think of how righteous the Vietnam and Iraq wars were.
Besides, they had no way of knowing that there were plenty of greedy, self-centered mainland marauders living in Honolulu who would jump at the chance to treat the environmentally sensitive and infrastructure-poor neighbor islands like their personal playground and toilet and plunder the resources, trash the place and go home.
Why Americans can always be counted on to put their own self-interest aside and do what’s for the good of others. When people ask them not to overrun and despoil someone else’s neck of the woods Americans never just call them NIMBY’s, push them aside and take what they want with no regard for anyone but themselves.
So they certainly couldn’t count on all that happening. It was just a happy coincidence that the greedy pigs put on enough political pressure to force the state’s Minotaurs at the legislature and in the administration to do what was wrong as long as they could.
Yup- Fargo has opened everyone’s eyes to our silly evidence-based conclusions.
We who thought there was ever any connection between the Hawai`i Superferry Inc. and the military simply made the common mistake of believing’ our own lyin’ eyes instead of the words of those always trustworthy PR hacks and corrupt military personnel and contractors.
Even though their wieners are out and there’s a distinct and overpowering pissy stench of ammonia coming from our feet, apparently it’s just raining.
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