I KNOW I HAD MY JOHN HANCOCK RIGHT HERE A MOMENT AGO

I KNOW I HAD MY JOHN HANCOCK RIGHT HERE A MOMENT AGO: Sometimes an election can turn on just a few votes. A few years back the Kaua`i mayoral race was clinched by just four votes.

This year some legislative races came down to a few handfuls of votes and in the case of at least one- where turnout was alleged to have been reduced due to the Big Island county clerk's apparent incompetence- it spurred a Hawai`i Supreme Court challenge after polling places opened so late that many early-bird voters simply "gave up."

So it's no wonder that some candidates go to unusual if not illegal lengths to assure enough individual votes to assure victory.

According to reports, the loser of a Honolulu County Council race, Martin Rana Han, is challenging victor Joey Manahan's win alleging that Manahan went into voters' homes and intimidated them into filling out their mail-in, absentee ballots in his favor.

But even assuming it's true, that type of effort pales in comparison with the bad old days on Kaua`i when incumbent Mayors Eduardo Malapit and his successor "Uncle" Tony Kunimura didn't have to intimidate anyone to scoop up bucketfuls of votes from those in no position to vote for themselves.

Back in the late 70's early 80's as a Registered Nurse in training we had occasion to work in two "long term care" facilities on Kaua`i- Mahelona Hospital and the 2nd floor "Makai" unit at Wilcox Hospital.

During an early 80's election we also had occasion to speak with two nurses at Mahelona shortly after hearing that in late October the elections division folks had paid a little visit to assure the "residents"- many of whom were too infirm to make it to the polls- got their chance to vote.

That included not just those with their faculties intact but, to use decidedly unprofessional language, were little more than drooling rutabagas with vacant-gazes seemingly permanently propped-up on their tuffet in the day room.

According to the two nurses, ballots were distributed ,and if the resident was, ahem, "having trouble"- in many cases not even recognizing the pen as a writing implement much less the ballots as an instrument of voting- an election official would come by and "assist" them in voting, saying "oh, you want Uncle Tony, right?" and otherwise "properly" marking their ballots with not only votes for Kunimura but also the then-current council chair and the council majority that just coincidentally had hired the county clerk conducting the balloting.

When we asked why they didn't say something they told us that this type of activity had simply been the way it traditionally was every election year going back to Malapit and even before that.

And if they expected to keep their jobs they knew better than to try to end the practice now.

So was this an isolated situation? What about other "care homes?" We happened across two others, a nurse and nurse's aide, who worked in the "Makai" Wilcox facility and they needed little or no prodding to recount similar tales, one saying that the ballots were distributed "pre-marked" with the appropriate incumbents' names. Not only that, but apparently this practice had been a topic of hushed discussions with other healthcare professional who worked in other smaller private care homes on Kaua`i.

And those discussions left them no doubt that it was "routine" across the island for the Kaua`i elections bureau workers to mine the votes of those who didn't seem to mind if they did, thank you very much.

We doubt it's as blatant these days as it was was back in the day when the "old boys network" ruled in a far more open fashion. It was a lot easier to use the intimidation of "plantation mentality" in the days when the plantation still existed. Back then it didn't matter whether you worked for the county or state or worked somewhere else. If you expected to keep your job you were expected to keep your trap shut no matter what you saw.

But still you've gotta wonder how much it has actually changed and whether the practice of determining "voter intent" is still as cavalierly abused as it was more than 30 years ago.

Manahan isn't the only one being accused of going into people's homes and telling them what their intent is. State House candidate Romy Cachola has been similarly accused by his opponent.

If it happens in two races- that we know of- in Honolulu where the scrutiny is tenfold what it is here, it's kinda hard to say that in this "separate kingdom" of ours, where cronyism is arguably more rampant today then ever before, the abuse of our electoral system may not be tenfold worse too.

OCCUPY THIS

OCCUPY THIS: One of the stranger aspects of the Occupy Kaua`i "rally" (for lack of a better term) last Saturday was the presence of Kaua`i Police Department (KPD) Chief Darryl Perry. But stranger than his mere presence is the way he has taken advantage of the local version of the movement to pump up his image in the media.

Not just his presence but his statements- that essentially he was there to protect the participants- were widely reported although he and his officers just stood by during the one thus-far-unreported incident. Just after the 11 a.m. start two state trucks came by packed with contra-flow "cone-droppers" who yelled at "protesters" to, among other slightly nastier things, stay out of the street, even though no one was obstructing traffic.

And obviously Perry's fellow officers didn't seem to care.

But Perry wasn't done with his use of the rally for personal PR purposes after Sunday's and Monday's TV and print offense.

Today a piece in the online "newspaper" Civil Beat appeared in the form of an "interview" with the Chief although it had Perry's own byline making it unclear if the "questions" were Civil Beat's (as the first question intimated) or Perry's own.

Anyway he took advantage to of the opportunity to say things like:

The “occupy” movement and civil unrest in general is a means to express displeasure and/or dissatisfaction with the current state of the political climate as it relates to government or corporate policy.

Growing up in the 1960s during the Vietnam Era, and being witness to local protest movements concerning Native Hawaiians, I can understand the frustration of individuals who feel that they are disadvantaged through no fault of their own or they need to stand up for others who are not able to do so on their own.

But don't for a minute think he was supporting the confrontational aspect of the movement pitting the "99%" of the people against the 1% that control most of the wealth in this country and county.

He went on to say:

This frustration appears to be global, but I believe what is unique about Hawaii in their appeal to the silent majority via demonstrations, is that we have great respect for each other which is based in our up-bringing of being pono. I want to make it clear, that this respect for one another is not racial and specific to one ethnicity, it is more culturally based, and as you know, Hawaii is a mixture of all races coming together and believing that we don’t check our values at the door for a cause or circumstances; that our integrity is always at the forefront of our actions.

Ah, the old plantation mentality appeal, essentially saying that we 99%ers just love to be exploited by the 1% and are too laid back to do anything but have our say and go back to our cruddy, exploitative, starvation-wage jobs.

Well we wonder how Perry and his KPD officers are going to react if a plan by the group "Occupy Kaua`i" comes to fruition.

According to a widely circulated email, members of the group met Monday evening and

after much thought and even more deliberation, we decided that we would do an actual "occupation" at the park near the county building beginning this Friday. We are going to have a meeting at the pavilion at Lydgate park on Thursday Oct. 20th at 7pm. We are going to go over our goals, concerns (we have somebody looking into legal issues), planning, logistics...etc. We will be having a potluck, so please bring something to share, but no big deal if you don't. Please inform anybody you know who may be interested in standing with the 99%.

Assuming the "legal" issues can be worked out, it will be interesting to see how Chief Perry and his force respond to the only actual "occupation" in the islands- what with the respect and permissiveness he's been expressing toward the group in the media this week.

BIG DOG ASPIRATIONS

BIG DOG ASPIRATIONS: In this week’s “Kaua`i People”- the mid-week advertising newspaper that pops up in your mailbox every Wednesday- our friend Joan Conrow’s profile of Councilperson Jay Furfaro begins by saying “Jay Furfaro is a man with many roles, but steward is the one he considers most important”.

But many who know and have dealt with Furfaro or watched his machinations at televised council meetings, see that quality which Furfaro calls “stewardship” expressed in it’s basest form through a kind of pompous, paternalistic, know-it-all persona noted for his penchant for essentially telling questioning members of the public “I’ve looked into it and it’s all ok so don’t worry your pretty little head about it”.

Now it came as no surprise that, at last Wednesday’s council meeting, the council approved without comment the write-off of a $6,044.98 delinquent “tipping fee” debt- one on which we reported on that same day exposing the blunder that led to the need to forgo the “bad debt”

We didn’t expect the council to use the television cameras to explain that, after eight years of lapsed payment plans, the debt was now uncollectible due to a legal screw-up by former Deputy County Attorney Jim Tagupa who, after the county sued and the judge ordered the amount be paid or the debtor’s property be attached, inexplicably filed a “Satisfaction of Judgment” despite the fact that the money was never paid.

(To follow up, current County Attorney Al Castillo still has not returned our Wednesday phone call asking for an explanation and/or comment.)

But what occurred during a recess after the matter had been swept under the rug was exactly what we’d expect from Furfaro, whom Conrow’s article intimates is considering a run for the to-be-vacant state senate seat in 2010.

Seems the “nitpickers”- the group of council regulars who now wear as a badge the name they got from former Mayor Maryanne Kusaka for criticizing the inflated purchase price of Kaua`i Electric by the current co-op- was discussing the write-off wondering what the deal was and why we were taking the loss.

That’s when the self appointed nitpickers were overheard by Furfaro, the self appointed all-purpose explainer. Unsolicited, he sauntered up to them and, according to nitpickers Glenn Mickens and Rob Abrew told them that it was simply “an accounting problem” and that the council was actually insuring that the matter “can now go to collection”

Abrew said “he told us this is the way the accountants do it- this way we can write it off our books and it can go to collection”.

Mickens independently corroborated Abrew’s account- without having heard it or discussed it with him or us- saying in an email saying that Furfaro “said it is simply some type of accounting problem and that when the issue goes in the proper table it means that the account is still collectible”.

We admit to being a bit sneaky here in publishing the real story during the council meeting rather than before or after as an experiment to see whether the council- who was presumably just as informed as we were since the information came from the council’s packet of background documents they receive with the agenda six days before each meeting- would be honest and level with the people on their own, without media prodding.

And as we said we fully expected that no one would say a word in session when the matter was silently approved. But Furfaro’s seems so fixated on his “stewardship” role- even to the point of either making stuff up or talking about it without doing his homework- that he can’t resist an opportunity to either cover for administration incompetence even it means “open mouth-insert foot”.

And he wants to be our state senator- or if not move up to council chair when Kaipo Asing retires next year as he has publicly stated he will.

It makes us once again quote Manager Casey Stengle of the still-a-record 120-game-losing 1962 NY Mets who asked “can’t anyone here play this game?”.

AND YOU GET ALL THOSE MEATY BY-PRODUCTS TOO:

AND YOU GET ALL THOSE MEATY BY-PRODUCTS TOO: The talk of the town today is a piece- we won’t say a piece of what- in Hawai`i Business Magazine headlined “Something’s Happening Here” written by 2006 Excellence in Journalism Award winner Scott Radway.

But the only award Scott could hope win for this one would be for parachute journalism- and that presumably if he lied and said he had come to Kaua`i for the undatelined story.

If he did do the drop-in, it didn’t show. Radway’s telephone and email skills are lackluster as is his lack of depth in describing “A string of controversies on Kauai is changing the way people do business” as the article’s sub-head states.

Unwittingly Radway dishes more of exactly what people on Kaua`i are fed up with- current day lunas seeking to reestablish plantation mentality claiming a silent majority of cowed, plantation lackeys they wish still existed and proposing more dog and pony shows to try to keep us the way we were.

He quotes every business mouthpiece and hack around- the kinds of BS artists who are as out of touch as they could be. The story is based on quotes from the following, all trying to tell Radway what the common people are thinking:

-Long-time County biz-shill Beth Tokioka,

-Top-tourism promoter Sue Kanoho,

-Future Lunas of Kaua`i wannabe and current Kauai Chamber of Commerce (CofC) President Randall Francisco,

-CofC Chair Joy Miura Koerte who doubles in the daytime doing the usual public relations slime-work at Fujita & Miura,

-Randy Hee, the top apologist and good old boys at KIUC, the “co-op” electric company,

-Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura who chairs the “how-far-should-we-bend-over”, “how much money ya got” and “where-do-you-want-to-put-it” Planning Committee and

-Hizdishonah Mayor Bryan Baptiste who, if he had a dollar, a day and a brain he would still be two short of each.

They all do their best to tell investors and developers that, not to worry, people here are so dumb and snowed you actually can take a dump on Kaua`i people as long as you make believe you asked them first.

The article starts with some of the usual Oahu-centric myths about the Superferry which now includes apparently charges of “vandalism of vehicles” during the first attempted docking of the hated harbinger in the harbor, replete with snide comments about the protesters from Kanoho.

Radway starts with an insincere derision of the world’s view of Kauai’s Hobson’s Choice with statement “Outside of Kauai, people could not help but ask whether the Garden Island was officially antibusiness? In a series of in-depth interviews, Kauai leaders emphatically stated that’s not the case, it’s far more complex than anything so black and white”.

But then he goes on to find out how that anti-business attitude can be overcome by smart PR and proper subjugation of the populace.

When Radway quotes CofC’s PR Queen Koerte as saying “(t)here are a lot of frustrations that cannot be left un-addressed. We need to really take the time to figure out where we are going and how we are going to get there”, there’s not much doubt about where “there” is- ramming big-money backed development down our throats but sugar coating it enough to not make us gag too much... and making it seem like we asked for that sweet turd on our plate in the first place

He quotes Tokioka, the County’s top development enabler with the past two “never met a hotel they didn’t like” administrations, as saying “(t)here is a heightened awareness of anything that might impact our quality of life. Processes are not easy on Kauai right now.”

That’s right- beware developers- it’s so bad out there you’d better schmooze and pay off people with millions set aside to grease the skids if you want to put your money suction machine wherever you want.

The article mentions some horrifying stats from the Kauai Planning & Action Alliance (KPAA) about how bad living condition for the workforce are on Kaua`i and praises the overdevelopers in Po`ipu and their fully ineffective “Dust Management Hui” which swept under the rug the issue if not the dust from a dozen simultaneous projects.

But painfully obvious in it’s omission is any possibility that your new gated golf course, resort and luxury home project might be the wrong fit for an island littered with them (and more already zoned), rather intimating it’s all a matter of presentation and not getting people so pissed off they block the harbor or threaten to burn it down when you sue to “get ‘er done”.

And talk about audacity. The articles says that Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura criticized the lack of implementation of the General Plan by the administration, and

“says instead Kauai often manages growth by reactionary measures such as a laundry list of approval conditions and at times, litigation. “One thousand conditions is not the answer,” she says. “You have to address the issue before it becomes a controversy.”

These words come from Ms. Sell-Out herself. Yukimura came back to politics after being credited with stopping the 1000 acre Kukui`ula resort, luxury home and golf course project as a citizen and then turned around after re-election and guided it through a contentious Council rezoning process toward approval.

And she says she did so because she got those “one thousand conditions” mostly so inconsequential and totally insufficient that they could and will never come close to paying for the county services impacts. The major “conditions” included a school no one (including the BOE) wants or needs, “workforce” housing that is so restrictive and expensive no one will want it and the road that runs through and serves the subdivision (and turns a quiet dead end road to Spouting Horn into a superhighway) but includes no other provision for roads to support the thousands of rich mainlanders who are going to overpopulate it and Po`ipu.

After some typical “huh??” words from Baptiste about how it’s not really a problem he created despite his administration’s lack of implementation of the General Plan and a Planning Department with a notorious revolving door to the remnants of the plantations at Grove Farm, Gay and Robinson and others the other CofC honcho Francisco does the dirty work of trying to divide Kauaiians by race and claiming the people here basically know their place and it’s a handful of outside rabble rousers stopping development

According to Radway, Francisco:

“acknowledges there is definitely an undercurrent of cultural division contributing to divisiveness.”

“I think people felt embarrassed,” Francisco says, referring to the Superferry protests. “We as people of Hawaii and Kauai, most of us came from a plantation community. That multicultural upbringing gives us our identity and sometimes for newcomers, there is a disconnect.”

”Francisco continues that, in plantation culture, where everyone was so interdependent, you didn’t always express your opinion so negatively, so publically(sic). “Sometimes how we use language, verbal and nonverbal, is the Red Sea that divides us. I don’t fault newcomers, because they don’t share that experience, but the majority of the community does have that as a reference point.”

Ah the good old days when the darkies on the plantation “no like say nahting” and if one of them looked the wrong way at the head of the CofC they were jobless, homeless and blacklisted before the sun when down.

Then Koerte cracked massah’s whip again saying:

“With a lot of issues, there is a silent majority, made up of a lot of local people, born and raised here. They do have the same interests and they do want to preserve our community our culture, our unique social fabric, but really weren’t against the Superferry and understand why the monkeypod trees have to come out,” says Koerte.

“A lot of the longtime people experience the shutdown of the plantations. They understand something has to come in so there are jobs and their children can return, can come home for work,” she says. “They understand something has to happen for us to progress and compete in a global marketplace. They are people who have experienced downturns.”

Yeah how’s that workin’ out for ya after following that scheme for the 50 years since most of the plantations closed?

We all know how-- with more hotel plantations giving our kids the opportunity to have six jobs each cleaning rich people’s toilets with their tongues at starvation wages while the ultra rich move in next door or put in a vacation rental driving our taxes through the roof and making housing cost more than Tokyo as the working poor on Kaua`i slide down the razor blade of life while the pols create “for sale” affordable housing at a price just out of the reach of anyone who needs it so the rich end up getting a cheap deal when we can’t even afford or find a rental unit.

Tokioka then takes it home with the advice that it isn’t really about how bad the project is, how it will hurt the community, how it will continue the hopelessness of most local families or dash the hope that they will ever get any sleep before the kids leave home.

It’s all about how you sell it to the plantation-whipped plebes.

From the article:

“There is always a concern in business in trying to get something done quickly or efficiently, but I think where we are as an island, it is probably better to take more time and in some cases, a lot more time, and take the input and get buy-in,” Tokioka says. “So you have success at the back-end.”

Is the Superferry a good example of the opposite approach?“

Hindsight is always much easier, but clearly that project is not moving forward as planned,” she says. “You really can’t rush things here. It is better to take a little time and do your due diligence and come out with a better product, embraced by a greater segment of the community.”

Francisco puts on the capper that puts us in the crapper:

“Kauai is not antidevelopment. This is a place with tremendous heart and aloha. People want to know you’re genuine, your intentions are good and if the community is taken care of, the business will succeed.”

Sincerity is important and, as they say, if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

You bet there’s something happening here Scott- and what it is is all too clear to us if not you or your readers.