"Blood bath" isn't too strong a term for today's
Hawai`i State Senate shake-up. And social media has eleven
fingers to point in explaining how and why three of the biggest
advocates for food safety and sustainability- Senate Health Committee
Chairman Josh Green, Water and Land Chairwoman Laura Thielen, and
Agriculture Chairman Russell Ruderman- were reportedly ousted from
their committee leadership positions.
It would be easy, if not simplistic, to think that it was just an
early yet predicable coup for the chemical and Frankenfood cartel.
But the demise of conservative Senate President Donna Kim, along with
the survival of other allies of those opposed to the indiscriminate
use of pesticides and genetically-modified-food experiments, makes
that look like a less than compelling argument.
It would be easier still to blame Green's at-many-times abrasive
style and intransigence over the medical cannabis dispensary bill for
his ouster as conference committee chair precipitating the falling
dominoes that led to a 19-6 vote to replace Kim with Kaua`i Sen. Ron
Kouchi.
But perhaps because of the neophyte nature of the corporate media
reporters covering the legislature, those perplexed at the way
majorities shifted have little idea of how the legislature- and
moreover the state senate- has operated for decades.
Neither officeholders nor staffers are eager to talk on-the-record
about the politically functional dystopia that is the Hawai`i
Legislature. But when they do talk they start and end by saying it's
a lot like prison where survival means joining a gang that will
"cover your ass."
Though usually depicted using such niceties as "coalitions"
or "caucuses" with names (used more by reporters than
members) like "Opihi," and "Chess Club" or, more
traditionally, with the name of the leader, they are more like the La
Nuestra Familia and the Texas Syndicate because no one survives alone
in the Hawai`i Senate. You can't be everywhere at once and without
"family" you WILL be stabbed in the back.
In the legislature's hurry-up-and-wait, four-month rigid schedule
you can never be at every committee meeting, hearing or- more
importantly in a body that's exempt from the state's Sunshine Law-
back room deal-making session to protect your interests.
So you join a gang. You join the one that reflects your interests,
whether that means environmental protection, good governance and
"doing good" or money, power and "doing well."
You'll either find it or, by joining with those disenfranchised or
generally disgusted with the current selection of gangs, form a new
one.
That of course means that "you can't always get what you want
but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you
need." Because when all is said and done it's a game of
"Political Survivor" - Outwit, Outplay, Outlast.
And as every prisoner knows the gang will help you as long as you
are useful to them but if you burn them or make them look bad they
will turn on you like a pit bull in heat.
So what you don't want to do is make the others look bad. Like in
prison, it's a matter of "honor." You may not support the
legislative goals of your own gang members. Some put more or less of
an emphasis on supporting each others' priorities. But if you make
them look bad in front of the other gangs with whom they make have
made the necessary side deals required to engender support for their
priority legislation, you will be put on a flaming boat and set
adrift like a used-up Viking warrior.
And that's what Sen. Green did. And did with such an egotistical
zeal that he brought down the whole gang with him... except for those
who, out of self-preservation, jumped away from his flaming ship.
It wasn't just the medical marijuana dispensary bill. Green's
penchant for "my-way-or-the-highway" has sowed the
destruction of a slim sub-faction of his so-called "Chess Club"
gang long before last Friday's debacle when he was dumped in a vain
attempt by Kim and others to save their own asses.
Perhaps the most telling thing we found in press reports was this
(pay-walled) from a Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s coverage of the
Saturday morning massacre and Green's removal as head conferee:
---
Lawmakers had made a dispensary program one of their top
priorities in this year's session, and the effort had progressed
smoothly until last week's conference talks, which at times grew
heated.
Some dispensary advocates were irked by what they saw as a
hard-line approach by Green.
During a conference hearing Friday, Green had said he declined
to meet with the governor's staff about the dispensary measure. He
added he would not change his position on certain provisions even if
that might cost Ige's support and signature.
"The governor doesn't know half of what I know or you know
or Sen. (Will) Espero knows about this program," Green told
(House Conference Committee Chair Della) Au Belatti during conference
Friday. "He's a fantastic guy but he's not in the trenches."
---
Whether Green was always a babe in the woods politically, as many
observers have long contended, or whether the presence of a "27th
Senator" in the form of the well-connected and popular among his
former colleagues in the senate, Governor David Ige changed the
equation this year and Green simply never recalculated is subject to
more discussion. At best he exhibited a head-shaking political
naivety. At worst, the emergency room physician displayed an
egotistical "God Complex" on many health-care-related
bills.
It hasn't helped that his campaign donor list reads like a who's
who of corporate heath care lobbyists and physicians in a time when
donor lists are becoming ever more available for scrutinization by
the media and public.
No one is shocked- unless they are "shocked, shocked"-
that there's politics afoot at the legislature. Unless that someone
is Senator Josh Green.
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