NO RUNS, NO HITS, JUST ERRORS

NO RUNS, NO HITS, JUST ERRORS: It used to be that when some big corporation or government agency had some hair-brained scheme that was universally opposed on Kaua`i the "pusher" would just push harder.

But many times that's blown up in their faces and in some cases they've eventually had to back down on a project leaving them with no project plus millions of dollars in free publicity... the kind they didn't want.

One recent archetypical example of this was a project to plant trees to burn for electricity and do it on Hawaiian Homes land in Anahola- land that the Hawaiian community there had always thought would eventually be developed for homes for those Hawaiians who qualify.

The company, which had plans and an agreement to lease the land really cheaply, took a slew of body blows at various meetings and now the projects seems to be on its way to the scrap heap.

But after that ignominious instance the latest corporate-governmental "partnership" ploys seems to be, "if they push back hard, get out quickly... and cleanly- a la the PLDC.

But it's being done in a uniquely Hawai`i way.

The next instance was the plan by the semi-autonomous Kaua`i Water Department (KWD) to drill a horizontal potable water well into the "wettest spot in the world"- the sacred "Mount Wai`ale`ale."

Community groups- both environmental and cultural- essentially said "are you nuts?" and geared up for a long drawn out battle.

But instead the KWD announced that, despite all the professionally made charts and graphs they drew up and lugged to the first of many planned community meetings showing the project to be on Wai`ale`ale, in fact some lower level bureaucrat had simply "made a mistake" and instead they really had planned all along to drill into Mount Kahili.

Of course no one explained how it could have been a simple mistake. Nor did they mention that, although you'd need to drive half way across the island to get from the base of one to the base of the other, Mount Kahili is simply the back face of Mount Wai`ale`ale.

And now they've announced that they're canceling the meeting about the "new" Mt Kahili project entirely.

Many think that the whole project is suspicious, saying it's not being done to provide water to current customers but to essentially support massive planned future tourism development... and do it on the backs of the current water-users/rate-payers.

Other say it's because they need all that water for all that North Shore Ag land so that the "seed farmers" can grow more biotech (GMO) corn, soybean, cotton and other "seed." Right now there isn't enough water in the Moloa`a-Kilauea area even for the current small, organic "truck farmers."

But this $50 million drilling project- whether Kahili or Wai`ale`ale- will supply all the water the north shore could use for any kind of agriculture in an area where the irrigation ditch system left over from sugar cane days is now dilapidated to the point where it would be prohibitively costly to repair. Plus, if it could be repaired, there's no easy way to pay for it since it's not the kind of potable county water KWD controls- as was discussed recently by the county council.

It's not that surprising this announcement comes on the heels of that council discussion.

Back to our PR lesson- one that was not lost on the the Coast Guard whose recent announcement that they were going to extend the ocean "danger zone" for the Kekaha shooting range (which sits next door to the Pacific Missile Range Facility [PMRF] Naval Base) was met with a slew of negative comments from fishers, swimmers, surfers and other beach and ocean users.

But today an article in the local newspaper says that they have withdrawn the plans for expansion.

So what happened? The newspaper says:

“I think we could chalk it up to a mistake,” (Lt. Col. Charles) Anthony said by phone Monday. “A project manager had increased the size beyond what we had seen in the earlier drafts. We will be making up a proposal with a much smaller footprint.”

Just a mistake, that's all. Not a blunder by the military where an attempt to control more land and ocean has spurred some opponents to suddenly start talking about it being time to get rid of the shooting range, if not the Navy's next-door missile range, entirely.

Is this the wave of the future? Will Monsanto suddenly announce tomorrow that it had been a mistake to oppose the labeling of GMO products saying it was a decision made by some low level technocrat in Sector "R?"

Dream on.

But locally apparently it's "any port in a storm," the belief being that they can save face with the "I no like say nahting" locals by saying it was all a simple mistake.

But a word to the wise- the natives are becoming restless.

SUBTRACTION BY ADDITION

SUBTRACTION BY ADDITION: As much as our secret life is one of a devoted sports fanatic, this space has had a decided dearth of athletics-related material over the years. And today is really no different.

Yes, our subject de jour is this week's 180 performed by new University of Hawai`i Athletic Directer Ben Jay who, after banning the use of the name "Rainbows" by UH men's teams shortly after his arrival earlier this year, decided this week to once again allow UH teams to use the beloved moniker.

But while it's a sports story everywhere else in the Hawai`i media, let us be the first to remind readers that is actually a long-sought repudiation of former football coach June Jones' bigoted and homophobic striking of the name Rainbow in 2000 because we don't want no sissies or fairies (or any other six-letter "f" word) amongst the macho men of our football team.

Lest we forget that's what Jones said it was all about at the time. He essentially announced that he was worried that his big, bad football heroes were afraid of being teased by other teams over the name "Rainbows" and that it was projecting an image he didn’t want for his team... wink, wink, elbow elbow.

To put it in historical context it was a time shortly after the voters of Hawai`i took away the historic, court-granted right to marry any person one damn well pleases.

And Jones used his position as football coach to project and impose his own intolerance, jumping on the anti-gay bandwagon in no uncertain terms.

It was the first and only time our constitution was changed to actually remove rights rather than protect them and it persists on the books today as a shameful reminder of how lacking in political spines our state legislators remains to this day- unable to even pass the legislation that the constitution allows to fully extend marriage rights to everyone, much less put the repeal of the constitutional amendment on the ballot.

But while the rest of the country moves into the 21st century (the 12th state, Minnesota, just okayed universal marriage rights yesterday) to seemingly compound the problem, Jay's original decision not only confirmed his own homophobia, he did it by exercising the same kind of arrogant decision-making that has brought down many a UH leader... "outgoing" UH President MRC Greenwood coming to mind after a similarly tone deaf performance, hers before a senate committee last fall.

Apparently Jay's reversal has pulled his own fat out of the fire for now. But memories are long and tenures at UH tend to be sort for those who come over to the islands and tell us what we need to do because we're apparently too dumb to manage our own affairs and we've been doing it wrong all along.

The circumstances surrounding Jones 2000 team renaming have been ignored by the Hawai`i press, especially in failing to compare and contrast the attitudes of a mere 13 years ago and this year- a year when news of the first "coming out" by a member of a major US team sport has been greeted with a hearty "ho-hum" in some quarters, many being something less than shocked to find out that some players are gay.

Is 13 years so long ago that no one remembers the bad old days when a football coach could get away with such appallingly bigoted behavior? Or is it just more of the Hawai`i presses "never was heard a discouraging word" attitude toward UH sports which has helped smooth Jay's short stint in charge of UH athletics?

The re-institution of the name "Rainbows" - albeit as part of the name "Rainbow Warriors," lest anyone feel like they're having their manhood challenged- has been said to be due to "tradition." But the end of a tradition of a**hole behavior should be receiving a lot more attention.

Because only if attention is paid to the more shameful parts of the history of the name "Rainbows," can there be a true end of the June Jones era of fear and loathing in the UH locker room.

For my Mommy on Mothers' Day 2013

For my Mommy Amy Dunis Parks nee Maime Dunefsky (1917-1970) on Mothers' Day 2013

I remember how I sat on the floor at my Mommy's feet because I couldn't stand yet. And I remember how much I loved my Mommy.

I remember feeling wobbly just sitting up but my Mommy was right there, sitting at the sewing machine and wearing a long dress and I felt adventurous and brave. And I remember I loved my Mommy.

I sat in a conical beam of light that came through the same window where I sometimes watched the boats go by and I was mesmerized by all those sparkly specks of dust dancing in the light and I looked up when my Mommy said "Andrew?" And I loved my Mommy.

In her hand she held a slice of a tangerine with all the little strings carefully removed and she dangled it just out of my reach and I wanted "up" so I grabbed her dress in my little baby hands and with all my little baby strength I pulled myself up, climbing, climbing, one hand over the other, finally "standing" as it were, on my feet while leaning on her legs and holding on tight with both of my little baby arms. And I loved my Mommy.

And then she put the tangerine in my mouth and I toothlessly "bit" down and the juice filled my mouth and dribbled down my cheeks and all over my chest but I didn't care because I had barely tasted anything but my Mommy's milk before much less anything sooo sweet and it was sooo goood and I wanted sooo much more, more, more. And I loved my Mommy sooo much and wanted her more, more, more.

We did that over and over for what seemed like all day, one tangerine slice after another, while she worked the sewing machine with her feet on the treadle, one hand on the wheel and the other holding tangerine slices for me. Only for me. And I loved my Mommy.

And I would have loved my Mommy even if she didn't take care of me and hold me tightly when I cried and feed me from her breast when I was hungry and clean me up when I made a mess in my pants and keep me safe from all the scarey stuff and read to me and talk to me and coo to me and make funny sounds by blowing on my belly, both of us laughing, laughing, laughing...

The sweet juice kept coming and the light streamed through the window until she wiped my face and hands and belly with a damp washcloth. And even though I didn't like that washcloth I knew she wiped me clean because she loved me.

And I loved my Mommy. MY Mommy.

And my Mommy loved me.

THE LONELY GURGLE

THE LONELY GURGLE: Anyone who has perused this space recently would think that the spate of 11 drowning on Kaua`i this year and the tourism industry's tepid response is an obsession of ours worthy of Melville novel.

Well, dial 1-800-Ishmael. It's apparently been left to us to point out the less-than-in-your-face visitor industry tactics that have not only failed to make tourists sit up and take notice of the fact that DEATH AWAITS YOU OFFSHORE- or even on the edge of it in a few cases- but have actually obscured the dangers that await visitors in the water, fearing that an effectively alarming effort would cause visitors to stay away in droves.

But this past week or so our in-box has been inundated by readers from Florida to Seattle with copies of an article actually calling out local efforts to play down the dangers of the ocean.

So what local publication was it that had the guts to publish a piece that challenges the number one private enterprise in the islands and was so shocking it got picked up across the nation?

The answer? There wasn't a one... a local one at least.

Rather, it was from the Associated Press (AP) wire service, a national- indeed international- enterprise. The article didn't even have a "dateline" indicating it could have been written anywhere.

Now that the cat is out of the bag on the mainland it has apparently become almost impossible for our "newspaper of record"- The Honolulu Star-Advertiser- to ignore that side of the story after running half a dozen "they're doing all they can" pieces.

Today they published- behind their "pay-wall" no less- not a local investigative no-holds-barred expose of the way the tourism industry is murdering tourists for money but the week-plus-old AP piece that everyone except Hawai`i denizens has been seeing for more than a week.

Of course not to be outdone, Civil Beat, the on-line competitor to the S-A, posted a link to a copy of the AP piece from "News12" in Brooklyn, NY... as part of a blog post in which a dozen other links to local news items appeared.

We previously written a series of posts, detailing, among other things, the slick and particularly un-scarry "oh by the way- don't drown" video produced by Mr. Tourism, former Councilmember and still TV star Dickie Chang and gushingly supported by both the Kaua`i Visitors' Bureau and the Kaua`i Ocean Safety Council as well as other tourism industry big-wigs.

Our basic contention has been that, as we said in early March,:

The message we're getting (from the tourism industry and kow-towing "ocean safety" crowd) is "we're doing all we can and we're going to do more to make sure we send a non-threatening, non-scarey message."

Somewhere there's a disconnect here because wherever we go all we hear is people saying that the tourism industry is responsible and needs to change the content of their warnings, not just put up more and bigger TV screens at the airport baggage claim showing beautiful ocean scenes and a whispered voice-over saying "please try to be careful."

The old "if in doubt, don’t go out" adage is obviously not working. Is it to the point where we need ads with pictures of the bloated corpses of drowning victims with something like "The ocean is a killer- this could be you" written across them?

Is it possible to go too far in the other direction? Probably. But the answer to sending out an ineffective message is not to simply make sure that message is repeated more often in more places.

As to the AP article itself it achieves many of its goal through understatement. But this quote from State Rep. Tom Brower (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana-Kakaako) is shocking for the fact that he actually gave voice to what we've been assuming all the other mucky-mucks are thinking. According to the article:

Some legislators think the proposed video might unnecessarily raise fears or hurt the state's idyllic reputation among tourists.

"You don't want to be on a plane and see people getting eaten by sharks..." He added that ocean safety education is important, but "you don't want to beat people over the head with it."

No- better they die than not come, eh Tom?

He's not alone. The AP goes into detail about how the legislature did do something- they passed a non-binding resolution politely asking the airlines to play that half-hearted "nothing to see here" Chang video.

While some airlines hemmed and hawed and basically said "you first" to each other, they couldn't even get a comment out of the rest as to why they won't play it on-board their flights and have left it for Kaua`i County to play it in the Lihu`e airport baggage-claim area- where tourists always want to linger and watch videos instead of grabbing their bags and getting the hell out of there and into the ocean... where they can drown-in-peace.

There has been a respite in the drownings of late- apparently even the tourism industry’s best efforts couldn't keep visitors from hearing about this year's ocean die-in.

But the all-powerful grip of the visitor industry on matters of life and death remains the county's dirty little "pay no attention to the man behind the screen" official state secret that will undoubtedly take more lives once the current hub-bub dies down.

IF YOU CAN BELIEVE YOUR EYES AND EARS

IF YOU CAN BELIEVE YOUR EYES AND EARS: If you've read either Joan Conrow's recap of yesterday's council budget hearings, where her thus-far twelve chapter "Abuse Chronicals" were front and center during a grilling of Planning Director Mike Dahilig, or amazingly enough the local newspaper story about it, you know that something, as usual, stinks at the Lihu`e Round Building and vicinity.

Despite long repeated sessions over the past few years between the council and the planning department assuring the latter that the former would provide all the resources necessary to make sure that Transient Vacation Rentals (TVRs) in non Visitor Destination Areas complied with the law, it has been left to Joan to detail a dozen of the more egregious non-compliance cases... with no action on the part of the county.

The new TVR laws legalized them in the late '00s but included provisions that they had to have been TVRs before the law was passed and that they comply with all existing building and land use laws prior to issuance.

So how's that workin' out for us?

Well apparently, according to records, Conrow has showed most of them were never in compliance to begin with but were passed anyway by Dahilig's predecessor Ian Costa- the well known Good Old Boy (GOB) who was fired as "Acting" (because he wasn't actually qualified) Planning Director amidst an FBI investigation in late 2010 and is now ensconced in the allegedly equally corrupt county Department of Parks and Recreation.

But even if- or maybe especially if- you're read Conrow's chronicles of abuse you really have to watch yesterday's Council vs Dahilig debacle for yourself to understand the hubris of, and outright stonewalling by, the administration.

Dahilig took the job amidst the federal investigation but hasn't done anything anyone can find to even begin exposing the alleged corruption much less what Conrow has shown to be the illegal way the TVR permits were issued. That has left it to Conrow's investigatory prowess to put pressure on the administration and get new Prosecuting Attorney Justin Kollar to speak out on the subject.

.

After a "presentation" at Tuesday's Planning Department Budget Hearing the TVR discussion begins at 0:48:39 on the recording. The real "meat" begins at 1;38:30 with Councilperson Tim Bynum's questioning of Dahilig, then Mel Rapozo at 2:01:00 and Gary Hooser at 2:15:00.

We're a little less charitable toward Dahilig than Conrow was in her description today, saving most of her criticism for Costa who approved most of the TVRs in question. But by any standard Dahilig stonewalled and tried to run out the clock, refusing to answer direct questions, hemming and hawing and repeating flimsy excuses for doing absolutely nothing in his almost two-and-a-half-years on the job.

The point is that regardless of "who started it" Dahilig has done nothing despite those persistent council demands that he ask if he needed more personnel or anything else and the council had his assurances he had all the resources he needed. This back and forth happened not just once but over and over according to strange-bedfellows Bynum and Rapozo who stood ready with pages of transcripts of those offers and broken promises.

Dahilig was asked over and over by Hooser, whether there was one- just one case where there was a document, perhaps "newly discovered," that Conrow might not have seen... one which would make just one case a false charge.

But Dahilig refused to straightforwardly say whether he found any of Joan's dozen cases were incorrect or if she perhaps lacked key documents which Dahilig claimed could be inside one of the many boxes at the planning department- right where they have been sitting for the more than two years since he took office. He couldn't even identify one of those documents that allegedly "could" exist.

Finally it took Gary having to extrapolate a flimsy agreement from Dahilig that no- he couldn't provide even one exculpatory document despite the fact that he’s been tripping over those boxes of unidentified documents that have lined the hallways for more than two years.

Well, as they say, we've seen this movie before. In fact we've written about it many times. It's called "The Fog and it's been part and parcel of the way various administrations have dealt with the council for decades- at times speaking virtually inaudibly, at others saying "we'll get back to ya on that" and at others talking a mile a minute on any subject but the one at hand.

As a matter of fact it was, if not invented, mastered and perfected by the aforementioned Costa, the long-time GOBAG (and girls) and the "star" of "The Fog."

Our suspicion is that either Dahilig is part of the corruption- or at least the cover-up- or he's trying to get through this while showing he's a what they call a "team player," one worthy of continued career opportunities within the county (or, reportedly, the state) crony system.

If you haven't read Conrow's series you're missing the best piece of investigative journalism around. But there's more to come because Kollar seems to be that rare individual in politics who does not do a 180 after getting elected. Instead he's continuing to not just talk the talk but he's getting geared up to walk the walk on TVRs and other issues such as alleged pesticide poisoning by the bio-tech seed-corn industry on the west side, both according to a recent radio interview he granted Conrow where the differences between Kollar and Dahilig were as stark as could be.

This ain't Sinope and we ain't Diogenes. But with Conrow and Kollar we just could put a dent in the cronyism that has shackled economic, environmental and social justice on Kaua`i since plantation days.

(Correction: Ian Costa currently works in the Department of Parks and Recreation, not Public Works. The in-line version has been corrected. We regret the error.)

GETTIN' FRISKIES

GETTIN' FRISKIES: Here kitty-kitty. Here kitty-kitty. Come and get it.

Come and get your new Obama Cat Food Tax.

Yes, let's call the so-called "chained CPI"- the most regressive of all possible taxes- exactly what it is... the tax that will provide the purrrfect meal for the poorest of the elderly poor.

Because if you're not eating cat food because it's all you can afford now Grandpa, you will be soon.

Under the proposed creative math in the President's new budget, those who live solely on Social Security- sometimes receiving as little as $710 a month to for pay rent, utilities, food and everything else- will now get even less cash every month... adjusted, as they say, for inflation.

That means that those who are infamously only able to afford canned cat food will now have to, well, presumably eat an even lower quality fare.

"No 'Fancy Feast' you," Grandma. "The Cat Food Nazi" says you can only have that tuna-fish blood-meat stuff that only kitty could love. Or perhaps down the line, as you slide further and further down the razor blade of life in the indigent lane, it'll be Meow Mix... if you're lucky.

If not maybe you'll wind up eating those Purina Cat Chow crackers, especially after your Medicare premiums go up... assuming you can find a doctor that will treat "Tender Vittles Syndrome"... if, that is, you can find a doctor who'll take you when Medicare starts paying physicians a buck-and-a-half a visit.

So thanks Mr. President. Every time we hear the can opener we'll be thinking of you.

SHOCKING REVERSAL

SHOCKING REVERSAL: Another chapter from the "are you gonna believe me or your lyin' eyes" department today from an otherwise- or maybe we should say formerly- unimpeachable source.

In a letter-to-the-editor of today's local Kaua`i newspaper, former long-time Honolulu Advertiser Kaua`i Bureau Chief Jan TenBruggencate- who is now the Vice Chairman of the Kaua`i Island Utilities Cooperative (KIUC) Board of Directors- excoriates columnist Walter Lewis for a piece published in the paper on Friday.

In it Lewis basically describes how a bill headed for apparent passage in the 2013 state legislature would, in his estimation, allow KIUC to get out from under regulation by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

He leads his column by saying:

The state legislature is currently considering two companion bills — HB 815 and SB 1045 — which could remove the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) from much or all of its regulatory function as to cooperatives.

He goes on to say how basically KIUC doesn't act like a co-op- something we've covered extensively in this space- and cites many of the known debacles like the FERC, federally-controlled hydroelectric projects as well as pointing out many potential benefits of PUC oversight.

But in a colorful and many times personal attack on Lewis, TenBruggencate say that it is not true of the bill and that Walter, as usual in TenBruggencate's view, has it all wrong. Rather he says:

The bills take away no authority, and indeed give the PUC new authority over KIUC. That includes the authority to protect consumers by exempting KIUC from expensive regulatory dockets that don’t apply to cooperatives.

So who is right?

Well, as an aside, we must point out first that of course it would "take away no authority" if indeed "regulatory dockets don't apply to cooperatives."

But to directly address the conflict, maybe the "description" of the bill will tell us. The official "description" of SB1045 SD1 HD2 says that it:

Authorizes the Public Utilities Commission to waive or exempt an electric cooperative operating in the State from compliance with the provisions of chapter 269, Hawaii Revised Statutes, as well as any other applicable charters, franchises, rules, decisions, orders, or any other laws

Sounds clearly like Lewis has it right. Although if our "aside" is any indication there may be some wordsmithing going on in TenBruggencate's letter that could obscures the facts.

We would also add something that TenBruggencate might not know but that Lewis- who was one of those most responsible for saving members up to $80 million in the lead-up to the purchase of the utility- seems to have forgotten.

One of the other proposals at the time that Citizens' Utilities was trying to sell "Kaua`i Electric" was that, rather than setting up a co-op the county would set up a government owned and run utility. As a matter of fact, the Kaua`i County Charter contains a section, passed by voters, on how a "Municipal Power Authority (MPA)" would work.

But one of the reasons the co-op idea won out was that decision makers with the county- specifically County Council Chair at the time Kaipo Asing and then-Mayor Marianne Kusaka- together extracted a promise from the co-op's organizing board that they would abide by two things. The first was that they would adhere to the provisions of the State Sunshine law which an MPA would have had to do.

The second was to put themselves under the control of the PUC.

The first never happened. Like a promised beach access that is fenced as soon as the construction of a development is finished, the Sunshine Law provision was obliterated when the by-laws replaced the articles of incorporation. But nobody noticed because the "nit-pickers" were too busy going over so many other details of the purchase, using their time to follow the money rather than the process.

Actually the group of infamous council curmudgeons led by legendary activist Ray Chuan. appropriated the name at the time when they were disparagingly given it by Kusaka for what she called the "nit-picking" the of the deal- nit-picking which later led up to the revised price.

And now the part of about the putting themselves under PUC regulation is about to be eliminated like the fence that goes up across the beach access when the development is sold... no matter what our good friend Jan says and how much virtual spittle he got on his letter.

Unless there's some provision in the current text of the bill itself to reverse 180 degrees the purpose/description- something we can't find but which would make the bill invalid at any rate because a bill is supposed to reflect it's original description- it appears that the one who has a "gross misunderstanding" is our good friend Jan, not Walter of whom we are more often critical than anything else... unless that is there are some clever semantics going on on the part of our pal with the skilled pen

We invite you to read the bill and both Lewis' and TenBruggencate's opposing "opinions" and decide.

It feels funny for the "Rabid Reporter" to be criticizing the great mainstream, "objective" journalist but apparently there seems to be a "fiduciary matter" that has turned the worm.

As they say, you're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts; the description of the bill seems to indicate that this time for once it's Walter who has a firm handle on those nasty little facts.