Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Obama may have scaled the hope thing up quite a bit, but ‘way back in 1974, when many readers of this blog may not yet have been born, the Democratic party line was pretty similar to today (sigh).

Check out this audio clip from the Disappeared News audio archives. It’s a 5-minute speech by labor leader George Meany that aired on November 4, 1974, radio station WOR in New York the night before Election Day (the last 30 seconds or so are missing).

If you stick with it a bit, at the 3 minute point more or less you’d think he was talking about 2010. Tax justice, jobs, health care, fair wages for “woikers” (I love the Bronx accent, that’s where I was born!).

If only we put the right people in Congress.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 08:36:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

HB2759 before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, in room 325 at 2:30 p.m. This bill would allow gambling on Hawaiian home lands. It has already passed the Committee on Hawaiian Affairs last week.

HB146, which would add a new section to the state constitution to permit gambling in Hawaii, is also on the same agenda.

If these bills are not stopped, they will just keep moving along.

If you feel strongly about the gambling issue, submit some testimony online. It’s easy. Try to get it in on Monday if you can.

The best thing is to show up in person, but if that’s not possible, submitting testimony is easier than ever this session.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 05:59:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

In an interview today with Katie Couric, Barack Obama announced that he will be meeting with Republican and Democratic leadership in a summit conference on the stalled healthcare reform (will he serve beer?).

This is, first and foremost, about defusing the lines of attack that have scared the hell out of Democratic legislators. If you talk to people on the Hill, there's relatively little concern about the substance of the likely compromise, but there's enormous anxiety over the public's belief that the bill is thick with noxious deals, which is fed by the idea that the process has been hidden from the American people. After all, people reason, if the bill was so good, why wouldn't they let C-SPAN into the negotiations? The White House hopes this summit will be a clean break with that narrative. [Washington Post, Obama calls the next play for health-care reform, 2/7/2010]

Ok, good that he’s holding this meeting. But it doesn’t do a darn thing to assuage “the enormous anxiety over the public's belief that the bill is thick with noxious deals.”

Why? Because both House and Senate versions are thick with noxious deals. Fact, not anxiety.

The anxiety might be that when they are done making these bills into rancid sausage, all that will be left of them will be the noxious deals.

I love this part of the snip above:

…If you talk to people on the Hill, there's relatively little concern about the substance of the likely compromise…

I’m not hopeful. Banksters got their bailouts and insurance company execs will get huge profits from these bills. We, the people, got …  … … gosh, I can’t think of anything.

And they are not concerned? We are.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 05:39:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Let me send you to my other blog. Need to get it started again. It’s just a click away.

How credit cards or food stamps might be used at the Farmers Markets

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 04:41:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Reading today’s Honolulu Advertiser may be hazardous to your health. The lead article talks once again about potentially dangerous meddling by the Lingle Administration with health care for Hawaii’s most vulnerable citizens.

Nowhere is there a hint that backing off from tax breaks for the wealthy or raising funds from other taxes could be used to reduce or eliminate the need for cutbacks.

You may recall that last year Hawaii’s Department of Human Services attempted to cut services to Micronesians and others living in Hawaii under the Compact of Free Association (COFA). Services to be cut included lifesaving dialysis and chemotherapy treatments.

It wasn’t a change of heart that prevented unnecessary deaths. It took a TRO issued by a federal judge to halt Lingle’s uncaring decision.

Today’s Advertiser describes more potentially damaging actions on the part of the Lingle Administration. If you don’t subscribe to the paper, click the image to read the complete article.

Professional journalists are typically restrained in using superlatives, so Derrick DePledge’s choice to use “stunned” and “alarmed” in today’s front-page Advertiser article, State may delay Quest payments (2/7/2010), is particularly significant:

The state Department of Human Services has warned health insurance companies that the state may not make payments for Quest — the state's health plan for low-income families — for the last quarter of the fiscal year, leaving insurers to absorb about $300 million in medical expenses until at least July.

The potential delay in payments has stunned insurers and alarmed health care providers, who worry a delay could jeopardize the ability of insurers to cover claims, which would cause cash flow problems and influence how some providers care for Quest members.

The article highlights several budget numbers. Nowhere does it mention alternatives such as increasing revenues to avoid the cuts. Let’s look at one of the numbers mentioned:

[Jennifer] Diesman[, vice president of government relations at HMSA,] said the Department of Human Services is also projecting a deficit for the next fiscal year, which Koller put at $146.5 million in her testimony to lawmakers. "There is no clarity about when we would be paid back," she said.

The $146.5 million is for next year. Raising that amount ought to be possible. My favorite suggestion is a tax on soda drinks which contribute to obesity and diabetes anyway. Sure, there could be other ideas, and we’ll need them all.

Need $146.5 million? Piece of cake, if you’ll pardon the expression. According to the Rudd Center calculator page, a 1.53 cent tax on soda beverages would bring Hawaii an estimated $143,556,236. Click the image to try your own calculations.

What will it take to break the ideological impasse? The Legislature can appropriate funds, but the Governor can veto the appropriation or withhold the money in the end, defying the intent of the Legislature. That’s supposed to be part of the “checks and balances.”

In practice, there’s no balance in the Governor’s ideology, just cuts for Hawaii’s most vulnerable while the affluent remain protected against loss of their profits.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 11:55:00 AM   3 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

This week three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear cases in Honolulu.  The court calendar is here (pdf).

Two cases in particular may be interesting to follow. Both will be heard on Wednesday, February 10, in the calendar starting at 9:00 a.m.  There is no way to predict what time the cases will be heard. Some of the cases may take time, some may settle in the hallway or in the Starbucks downstairs.

If you would like to observe, the courtroom is located at 1132 Bishop Street on the 6th Floor.

Hawai'i Coalition v. State of Hawai'i is fourth on the calendar. There won’t be oral arguments in this case. As far as we, the public, go, this may not be interesting. The Court has been briefed (as it is for all the cases) and that’s probably it. The judges might just say “We’ll get back to you.”

This case relates to alleged cutbacks in state Medicaid services, and is very timely (see also: Hawaii may delay payments to Quest health plan, Honolulu Advertiser, 2/7/2010).

It’s not fair to snip from a complicated case, but this excerpt from the initial complaint will give you a flavor of it:

HCFH brings this complaint against Defendants because they have failed to reasonably ensure that the required level of access to providers and continuity of medical services will be in place for Medicaid's most fragile and medically challenged population, the more than 37,000 Medicaid-eligible or enrolled aged, blind, and disabled individuals, wrongfully infringing upon their Federal and State law rights and impermissibly discriminating against them as a consequence of the fact that they are disabled.
…
Many HCFH members and non-members who will be affected by Defendants' implementation of QExA depend on the medical services Medicaid provides them for their very survival day-by-day. These are patients whose health and medical needs require careful and detailed planning based upon levels of certainty little understood or appreciated by people who have never had to contend with severe physical challenges or rely on medical devices and daily services.

Last on the calendar is N.D. v. State of Hawaii DOE, the Furlough Friday case argued in District Court by attorney Carl Varady on behalf of special needs students.

The case was heard by a 9th Circuit judge flown in after our local crew recused themselves. While he did not grant an injunction against the state, Judge Wallace Tashima did rule that plaintiffs are suffering irreparable harm. I suspect that his words will be echoed during Wednesday’s oral arguments.

There’s no predicting the outcome of any court case, of course. Nor can we expect an immediate ruling on Wednesday, though that also could happen.

Should the 9th Circuit rule for the children, however, that could end Furlough Fridays full stop. It could also open the floodgates for compensatory education hearings to make up the time the special ed kids have lost.

It’s important to note that the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) guarantees that special needs students will receive a Free Appropriate Public Education, or FAPE. A school or school district cannot claim poverty as an excuse for not delivering.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/07/2010 11:06:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

U.S. Attorney Ed Kubo’s campaign (see photo in this Advertiser breaking news story) succeeded this morning as the Senate confirmed him as a Circuit Court judge. The vote was 24 to 1.

The article didn’t delve into all of the controversies that could have derailed Kubo’s approval, mentioning only:

Kubo's nomination received widespread support in the legal and political communities. But several senators were concerned that Kubo did not disclose cases where he was criticized as a prosecutor on his application with the state Judicial Selection Commission.

There’s more, as was revealed in Senator Les Ihara’s floor speech, reproduced here in its entirety:

Sen. Les Ihara, Jr. Floor Speech on Ed Kubo Judicial Confirmation • February 3, 2010

Madame President. I rise in opposition to G.M. 109.

I would like to first acknowledge the outstanding service Mr. Kubo has provided to our nation and state as the former Hawaii U.S. Attorney. I particularly appreciate his extensive involvement in our community, and I wish him well if he is confirmed today.

Madame President, I was not so troubled by the non-disclosure issues that have been discussed, but I believe a fundamental value in our system of democracy is the respect of law. And in the judiciary branch of government there is no higher value than the respect of law.

I believe the nominee failed to demonstrate respect for the law in an incident that occurred in his judicial confirmation process. I believe his actions were inadvertent, but since he indicates they were intentional…I must respectfully disagree.

During his confirmation hearing, the nominee responded to testimony opposing his confirmation by recounting his role as the testifier’s employer and in the process revealed that the testifying employee was under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist.

When asked if revealing this medical information was proper, the nominee stated that – it was appropriate because the Judiciary Committee is the trier of fact and judging the credibility of the testifier’s accusations was relevant to understand his accuser’s state of mind. The nominee further explained the medical information was also public knowledge he heard from other U.S. Attorneys outside the office.

Madame President, in this state we have a constitutional right to privacy and state laws that prohibit employers from revealing medical information without the employee’s consent. And the nominee has acknowledged he was not aware of any waiver of the employee’s right to privacy, implied or otherwise.

Even if the accusations against the nominee were false, I believe this does not justify revealing private medical information that only the employer, employee and his doctors knew was true.

Even if the medical information was public knowledge because it came from reliable sources, it was the employer – the nominee, and no one else, who confirmed the information as fact.

But let's say Mr. Kubo's justification was valid, and he relayed only public knowledge that his critic had received certain medical care. I believe it would be inappropriate for other judicial nominees to share public knowledge to share the state of mind of a critic even if that information was reliable but unsubstantiated – that his critic was under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist.

I believe the nominee did not provide due respect to the law in revealing private medical information to defend himself during his confirmation hearing.

I understand the quandary he might feel this situation poses. He told me his statements might have been in-artful, but he claims it was appropriate to reveal the employee’s private medical information.

This incident happened in the course of seeking approval for his own judicial nomination, and I believe the nominee’s actions are unbecoming of a judge for the State of Hawaii.

For these reasons, I must fulfill my constitutional duty by opposing the confirmation of the nominee.

Thank you Madame President.

Unfortunately, no other senators were disturbed by the extent the appointee would go to discredit testimony against his nomination.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/03/2010 08:29:00 PM   4 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

A New Jersey judge has handed down a ruling in a five-year-old battle by voting rights advocates in that state against insecure voting machines. There were several issues resolved, and I’ve highlighted in bold face the sections of this snippet that relate to Hawaii and especially to last year’s Babson v. Cronin lawsuit:

Mercer County Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg held that New Jersey's 11,000 voting machines have to be re-evaluated by a qualified panel of experts within 120 days to determine whether they comply with NJ law requiring that they be accurate and reliable. Unlike the panel that currently evaluates voting machines, the new panel must have requisite knowledge of computers and computer security.
…
Judge Feinberg also ordered that all voting machines and vote tally transmitting systems be disconnected from the Internet immediately. Judge Feinberg also required that criminal background checks be performed on personnel who work with voting machines and all third-party vendors who examine or transport the machines. Currently, no such checks are in place. Judge Feinberg further required that a protocol be put in place for inspecting the voting machines to ensure that they have not been tampered with. Judge Feinberg found that the State of New Jersey should no longer leave voting machines unattended in polling places, to prevent tampering. Currently they are left unattended at polling places for up to two weeks before and up to two weeks after each election. [newjerseynewsroom.com, Judge’s ruling could cause New Jersey to scrap 11,000 voting machines, 2/1/2010]

Babson v. Cronin successfully argued that Hawaii could not transmit vote results electronically without administrative rules to permit that. The lawsuit sought to prevent “man in the middle” attacks that could change voting data without anyone being aware of the alteration.

New rules finally became effective in December, 2009. They permit electronic transmission of voting data.

SB2445, introduced but not yet scheduled for a hearing, would ban electronic transmission of votes, if it becomes law. Here’s what it says (snippet):

The legislature finds it is necessary to preserve the integrity and security of our electronic voting systems.  This Act will prohibit the use of voting systems that connect to the Internet at any time, that electronically receive or transmit election data through an exterior communication network, including a public telephone system, when the communication originates from or terminates at a polling place, satellite location, or counting center, or that receive or transmit wireless communications or wireless data transfers.

The purpose of this Act is to preserve the integrity and security of our electronic voting systems by prohibiting specific electronic connections, which decreases the possibility that voting information can be manipulated, thereby promoting voter confidence in the electoral process.

The bill has not yet been scheduled for a hearing. To find out how to urge legislators to hear it, see this article.

The second highlight resonates with a Disappeared News article posted on September 23, 2008, Your vote, your identity, at risk on Maui, which included photos of voting machines and supplies left unattended on Maui. Yup, just left there for anyone to meddle with.

There is more to the New Jersey lawsuit. For example, this disturbing revelation:

Plaintiffs' expert witness, Princeton Computer Science Department Chair Professor Andrew Appel, who evaluated the machines, created a fraudulent chip that stole votes and installed that chip in less than 10 seconds. The voting machines could not detect the fraudulent chip.

The New Jersey result is considered mixed because the judge did not order the state to comply with its own 2005 law requiring all voting machines produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot.

New Jersey and other states are backing off on voting computers similar to what Hawaii seeks to employ for future elections. This means that Hawaii may face additional legal challenges in the future.

Our Office of elections promulgated a new administrative rule, §3-172-93 Electronic voting systems; transmission, receipt, and tabulation of votes, that makes electronic transmission of votes legal in Hawaii without security controls. This rule (which has the force of law) says, for example:

Where possible, and to the extent that the voting system’s design permits, data transmission between system components should incorporate the use of digital signatures or encryption to authenticate the data for the particular election.

Authentication by encryption is not generally understood by the general public. It’s possible, using long encryption keys, to be certain of who (or what machine) sent you a message whether it arrived at your desk in the mail, on a floppy disk, via the Internet, or even if Al Capone and his gang broke the door down and dropped it off at gunpoint.

Once you authenticate the “envelope,” any data inside has a known origin. Authentication can be assured to any degree of certainty.

Cool that authentication is in the administrative rules. Not cool that it is all negated by the “where possible” part. In other words, forget it. This office of elections has not protected the electronic transmission of voting data. They know how it should be done, but they won’t do it.

[Side note: the admin rules themselves, posted on the Office of Elections website, are not readable by screen readers for the blind, nor are they searchable. The posting violates Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act which the website claims it follows.

Reading the rules, they require that there be an instruction card for the electronic voting computers. Again, great for those who are blind or cannot read the cards (sigh).

Finally, the Hart voting computers were first introduced as voting machines for those with disabilities, but their paper record still cannot be read or verified by the blind.]

Back to the subject at hand. If you agree that electronic transmission of votes without authentication is bad policy, please read how you can help the bill get a hearing in the Senate.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/03/2010 07:27:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Kick me. And kudos to Adrienne LaFrance.

I wrote a couple of articles related to the way the Hawaii House postponed indefinitely, without a roll call, the civil unions bill HB444 last Friday. In one, I said that because we don’t know who voted for postponement, those who might want to take this vote into consideration on election day 2010 might look at the bill history to see who voted for or against it last session.

That was all I could think of. Today’s Honolulu Weekly has a feature story, Roll Call, by Adrienne LaFrance, which puts mine to shame. Really, I would kick myself, if it were possible, for not doing a good job with this.

So what did LaFrance do that I am admiring so much? Why, all it took was to ask the legislators how they voted!  So obvious, right? Kick me.

Check it out at the above link. Note also those many who declined to respond. That says something about them, I think, as leaders. Perhaps the Weekly will accept “late testimony” from those who did not commit an answer for whatever reason and add those to the article. My guess is that they wouldn’t get many.

I am also very impressed that LaFrance asked each legislator for a comment on their vote. Read them, they tell a lot. Some respondents were direct about their vote, either way. A couple are kind of …. well, you decide.

I would like to re-refer you to my article on how a group in Utah dealt with replacing an incumbent. They ran a recruiting ad in Craigslist as part of the process (the ad is included in my article).

LaFrance’s list provides ammo for taking down an incumbent even if it is just by voting on election day. It’s not necessarily an act of revenge, though some may feel that’s necessary. The issue of civil unions will come up again. It could face a different set of representatives next time.

I think Hawaii voters might also be able to identify with this: When one of the Utah citizens’ initiative group asked why run someone against a Democrat, the reply was "To reclaim our party."

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/03/2010 04:38:00 PM   4 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I’ve been asked about my beloved TC1100 Tablet PC many times at meetings as I take notes with its stylus pen, or at the Legislature as I read testimony from it. It’s as good as a teleprompter with the plus that I can write on the screen if I think of something new to say. Recently, though, people are asking “Where did you get an iPad?”

So I made a screensaver with a “No Apple” logo on it just for fun.

And this Tablet PC is a lot of fun. It’s a workhorse, too. I can run my usual wordprocessing or graphic programs on it, or check my email. I can show my rat video to the few people who haven’t seen it. I can talk at it to do a Skype phone call or watch streaming TV. It converts my handwriting to text if I like, and although it is filled with three years of testimony, agendas and minutes, it doesn’t weigh any more than it did when I bought it. It syncs with my cellphone and my desktop. Unlike my Vista machine at home, it behaves itself and has proven reliable.

It also has a detachable keyboard with built-in joystick pointer, though I prefer to use a Bluetooth mouse. Unlike the iPad, it will do Flash (the iPad won’t).

I can read an eBook (or write one!). I can blog from it or read the New York Times.

The iPad could be very successful though, whereas my TC1100 is discontinued. At least, the iPad will stir up curiosity in tablets.

Guess what: Google may be thinking of a tablet of its own. This just out in today’s Guardian (UK):

Many Tablet PC users like the TC1100 form factor and wonder why Hewlett-Packard never made a modern successor to it. Maybe HP will catch the wave and come around.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/02/2010 10:44:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Bob Babson emailed information on these three election-related bills introduced by Sen. Gary Hooser.

Check them out by clicking on the bill number. It’s very easy to submit testimony this session by email or from the Capitol web pages, so please consider following them and helping them through the process if you feel you can support them (or if you oppose them, of course).

Right now, each bill needs to be heard, so what’s needed is to email the committee chair (see below) to get them scheduled for a hearing. Again, your emails make a difference.

Help improve our system of elections. Use your computer to make a difference.

For information on the RSS links that help track bills, see this link.

When you get a hearing notice, it will explain how to send in testimony by email, web page, or other means. It’s easy now!

Measure Title:
SB2415 - RELATING TO ELECTIONS BY MAIL.

Report Title:
Elections-By-Mail

Description:
Establishes elections-by-mail as the only voting system in Hawaii. Makes necessary changes to chapters 11, 16 and 19, HRS.

To follow this bill, stick this link into your RSS newsreader.

What does this bill need now? An email to Senator Brian Taniguchi, chair of the Judiciary and Government Operations Committee, asking that it be heard. His email is sentaniguchi@Capitol.hawaii.gov.

Measure Title:
SB2446 - RELATING TO ELECTRONIC VOTING SYSTEMS.

Report Title:
Electronic Voting Systems; Integrity and Security

Description:
Prohibits electronic voting systems from being connected to the Internet, electronically receiving or transmitting election data through telephone system, or receiving or transmitting wireless communications or data transfers.

To follow this bill, stick this link into your RSS newsreader.

What does this bill need now? An email to Senator Brian Taniguchi, chair of the Judiciary and Government Operations Committee, asking that it be heard. His email is sentaniguchi@Capitol.hawaii.gov.

Measure Title:
SB2445 - RELATING TO AUDIT OF ELECTIONS. 

Report Title:
Auditor; Elections Audit 

Description:
Requires the auditor to conduct an audit of every statewide primary and general election and to report to the legislature. ($) 

To follow this bill, stick this link into your RSS newsreader.

What does this bill need now? An email to Senator Brian Taniguchi, chair of the Judiciary and Government Operations Committee, asking that it be heard. His email is sentaniguchi@Capitol.hawaii.gov.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/02/2010 05:40:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Well, we get the Vog over here on Oahu, but don’t get to look at the volcanic eruptions that produce it. I was checking out some of the Hawaii blogs, and while realizing that I don’t link enough to them, I ran into this Kalapana Burning, which includes some videos of lava flows.

It’s from Intercultural Twilight Zone, written from Pahoa (s. of Hilo).

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/02/2010 04:48:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Voters may or may not take revenge against House members who refused to vote for HB444, the civil unions bill, killing it again this session. But the issue may be very much alive at election time if a court challenge goes forward as announced today.

A formidable legal team has been assembled for this project. Lambda Legal will be lead counsel, the ACLU of Hawaii will be co-counsel and the law firm of Alston, Hunt, Floyd and Ing will serve as cooperating attorneys, according to the announcement.

While legislators were apparently concerned about backlash from church groups should they pass a civil union measure this session, advocates have pointed out that the current economic situation has heightened the need for the protections that HB444 would have provided. While the opposition has directed their attack against same-sex couples, the bill would have benefitted opposite-sex couples as well, for example, seniors who seek protection for the family home against nursing home costs.

To stay informed about the progress of this case and other ACLU activities, you can tune in to ACLU’s Twitter here.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 2/01/2010 06:30:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Three governors put a full-court press on education reform in today’s Advertiser.

The article deserves detailed analysis, but without time to do that right away, I’d like to make some short and admittedly inadequate comments before the article gets too old. These are just things that popped out for me as I read the article.

The snips are from Education reform must put kids first (1/31/2010).

• Special education: Some say Hawai'i has many special-needs students, but Census Bureau data show Hawai'i has a relatively low percentage of students who require special-education services— 11.69 percent versus the national average of 14.65 percent.

This may not be a very large discrepancy (I wonder what the spread is for other states). But somewhere around 1993 it was a remark by then Gov. Waihee that Hawaii had very few special ed students that helped trigger the Felix v. Waihee lawsuit. At that time there were vanishingly few special ed students receiving services at all.

Anecdotally, parents are reporting that the DOE is cutting back on identification and services now. At some point this could lead to Felix II, if accurate. So having less than average special ed students may not be a good thing to boast about.

Point taken that special ed is not responsible for the poor performance of Hawaii schools, and it is a valid point.

• Private schools: Some people say private schools in Hawai'i cherry-pick many of the brightest children. But 11 other states have a higher percentage of school-age children in private schools than Hawai'i's 16 percent.

Er, and the point is? Any number of states can have a higher percentage of school-age children in private school than Hawaii has, and Hawaii’s private schools can still be cherry-picking many of the brightest children. It’s a non-sequitur.

At least it shows that the number of kids we have in private schools isn’t unusual. Remember this the next time public school bashers remark on the number of kids in private schools here.

Give principals the power and resources to be true leaders of each school, and then hold them accountable.

Principals make all the difference in the success or failure of a school; there are numerous examples nationally where a principal has transformed a failed school. But most principals in Hawai'i feel powerless to make needed changes. We must give them the resources and clear-cut authority to transform their schools. Principals should be able to hire teachers and terminate underperforming teachers based on an evaluation process that emphasizes student growth and achievement.

I’ve worked with many principals over the Felix years. Hawaii has some great principals. And many duds. Give duds more power and resources and they are still duds. It seems we cannot get rid of the underperforming principals (same complaint as is made about teachers). I could go for giving the good principals more power and resources and replacing the duds.

During the Felix consent decree, principals were often responsible for interfering with the progress of the settlement. For example, the Superintendent could issue a memo to special ed teachers and the principals could stop it from getting to them. It happened. Principals also insisted on running IEP meetings their way instead of the legal way.

I just mention this to illustrate that the three governors may be oversimplifying things a bit.

Next:

Preparing for important student tests takes time. Teachers argue that the testing required by the No Child Left Behind Act forces them to teach to the test and neglect other learning. Tests are not only required by law; they are a significant contributor to assessing student outcomes. Increasing classroom time will help students master the fundamentals and meet the standards that are tested, without sacrificing the development of other essential skills, such as critical thinking.

Yes, Hawaii’s short school year is a disgrace. Appointing the school board or superintendent may not solve that, though. The governor agreed to the Furlough Fridays, remember. A governor’s appointee would presumably have gone along with the boss’s wishes.

There is a New England saying that has been adapted by critics of high-stakes testing, “You can’t fatten a cow by weighing it.” The intense pressure to meet nearly impossible yearly testing goals certainly affects the quality of student education. The governors seem to think you can satisfy NCLB and teach critical thinking at the same time. Critical thinking and some other subjects basically haven't been taught in public schools for ages—there’s no time, thanks to NCLB. NCLB has crowded out music, PE, and more in many school systems.

We’re turning out little robots who can do nothing but read and do math. NCLB has been the one thing that has shaken up public schools everywhere in the country, but it is still widely criticized by those who care about giving children what we used to call a well-rounded education.

No one objects to reasonable testing, but these three govs need to do their homework on this.

Finally, this:

Hawai'i can create schools that put students first, but meaningful change will be difficult. The public education system spends billions of dollars each year and employs more workers than Hawaiian Electric Industries, HMSA, Alexander & Baldwin, Hawaiian Airlines, Kaiser Permanente Hawai'i, First Hawaiian Bank and Bank of Hawaii combined.

Um, so what? In New York State, do the schools employ more workers than all the big Wall Street firms combined? What’s wrong with that?  Another non-seq.

There’s a saying that policy is personnel. Just like appointing supreme court justices, a governor gets to leave a long-lasting imprint on government by means of appointments.

Governor Lingle has worked at undermining Hawaii’s present public education system for some time and received little sympathy or cooperation. One proposal, the weighted student formula, was to be adopted and has been, though only in part.

The argument that Lingle or successor governors should be able to appoint a school board is reasonable to debate, but there is nothing to say that it will bring about improvement in Hawaii’s public education. There could be, and I suspect there are, other motives behind it.

Having said all this, I think the three governors have performed a service by keeping public education in the spotlight.

My comments above are only my own opinion, and I’m no expert. I’m looking forward to reading some responses to their article in the paper from those with experience in public education.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/31/2010 09:13:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“Their projected time frame after exposure is 10 – 20 years before symptoms appear. But that is far from the truth, as soldiers lay ravaged in VA hospitals across the U. S. — or their family’s, kneeling at the foot of a needless grave, know all too well. Privy to the VA data since 2003, the DoD is familiar with their diagnosis of an uncontrollable wildfire of rare cancer, appearing four to 36 months after exposure.”

Stuff moves around, blows around, comes around.

So would depleted uranium if dislodged during military weapons testing in Hawaii or even during improper cleanup operations. It wouldn’t look like vog, though, you wouldn’t see it coming.

The quotation above is from Veterans Today, Military Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal, not from some lefty advocacy group. Check out the article.

News about DU in Hawaii will remain largely disappeared. You’ll have to google for it. Try a blog search also. After you do that, remember that there are advocates defending your health who also need your support in their efforts.

Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean you won’t breathe it.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/31/2010 02:53:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“Haiti is one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. foreign policy because Haiti is a neighbor (as is Cuba, where a similar relationship has persisted) and we have treated Haiti with cruelty all through our history. When it became the first independent black Republic in this hemisphere, defeating the Napoleonic army, the administration of Thomas Jefferson (ironically, author of our Declaration of Independence) refused to recognize it.

And in the early 20th century, repeated Marine excursions to put down rebellions, and in 1916, the supposed "idealist" and proclaimer of "self-determination" Woodrow Wilson sent an occupation army, killing several thousand Haitians who would not accept our rule. The occupation lasted eighteen years.

And since then, as you note, support of the Duvalier dictatorship. And hostility to Aristide the first democratically elected president. And for some time now, strangling Haiti economically, and ruining its rice crop for the benefit of U.S. exporters. If we weren't spending hundreds of billions on stupid wars, we could have made much of Port-Au-Prince less vulnerable to natural disasters.” – Howard Zinn, January 25, 2010

There may be a new option for those displaced or orphaned by the Haiti earthquake, even as security trumps humanity in now militarized Haiti.

Haiti-related tweets continue to give a flavor of the unfolding tragedy as the US military either assists or obstructs the relief effort according to differing readings of the situation:

White House says medical evacuations from Haiti to the U.S. to resume within 12 hours - NBC News

U.N. sets up 16 food distribution sites in Port-au-Prince, almost 3 weeks after earthquake hit #Haiti - BBC

A new development may offer long-suffering Haitians a way out from under the thumb of US intervention in their affairs. Senegal has proposed to resettle Haiti’s homeless in a new state created for them in Africa. Here is the Reuters report:

The African Union (AU) agreed on Sunday to consider a Senegalese proposal to resettle Haiti's earthquake homeless and possibly create a state for them in Africa.

The idea was first floated by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade who said the history of Haitians as descendants of African slaves gave them the right to a new life on the continent.

AU chairman Jean Ping told African leaders at its annual summit in Addis Ababa that they would discuss the proposal during the three-day event. The AU had opened an account for Haiti with the African Development Bank, he said. [Reuters, African Union to consider "land for Haitians" plan, 1/25/2010]

Of course, there is a long way between proposing a radical idea such as this and moving people into a new state ready and equipped to receive them.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/31/2010 01:15:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Utah progressives had an idea that looks transportable to anywhere. Even to Hawaii. They conducted a job search on Craigslist to recruit a candidate to replace a congressional incumbent.

Here in Hawaii, House Speaker Calvin Say said he would not bring HB444, the civil unions bill, to a vote unless he had a veto-proof majority. There was no vote. The popular wisdom is that legislators are scared there might be voter retaliation during this year’s elections. So why risk losing office especially if the House could not muster enough votes to override Lingle’s expected veto?

Without a vote on record for civil unions, presumably there was a big sigh of relief at the State Capitol.

It’s not inconceivable that there could be retaliation for not passing the bill. The problem is, absent a vote, who should voters retaliate against?

The closest to an indication of legislators’ positions is their voting record from last year, which is on the Capitol website here.

An interesting new twist in incumbent replacement is being pioneered in Utah right now. Yesterday (January 30), the Salt Lake Tribune reported the results of a unique grassroots effort: Progressive professor tapped to take down Matheson (1/30/2010):

Angry, and anxious to engage "a new politics," these activists aren't monkeying around.

More than 100 riled-up residents turned the Salt Lake City Main Library auditorium into a grass-roots primary Saturday, selecting 54-year-old pathology professor John Weis as the "Citizens' Candidate" to unseat Blue Dog Rep. Jim Matheson.

These angry citizens developed a unique approach to their problem. They posted a recruiting ad on Craigslist. This is a snip from their website:

Utah Citizens' Candidate

The Citizens' Candidate is pleased to announce a grassroots effort to elect a new Congressperson for Utah's Second District. This is a citizen-led initiative that seeks a representative who is answerable to the people; the initiative is being introduced by a coalition comprised of citizens who have committed themselves to working for justice on climate change, healthcare, LGBT, labor, immigration, peace, and environmental issues.

The Citizens' Candidate initiative began with a Craigslist help-wanted ad for a "Courageous Congressperson." We have received several applications and will continue accepting applications until January 15th. A final candidate will be chosen through public interviews at the Salt Lake City Library on January 30th.

The project achieved national notice on Friday with a Democracy Now segment, “The Citizens’ Candidate”–Grassroots Effort Uses Craigslist to Find Candidate For Utah House Seat (1/29/2010). Click the link for video, audio or a transcript.

This is really a grass-roots initiative that was an experiment. It has been an experiment the whole way through. It grew out of the realization over 2009 that Jim Matheson and a lot of the Blue dog Democrats were really doing more harm than good, that they were causing more of a problem with our system than the Republicans, actually, and that we needed to replace them

Here’s the ad:

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/31/2010 11:53:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I do enjoy Wait Wait Don’t Tell me and Splendid Table. It’s down hill after that. I stopped even my occasional listening to Talk of the Nation when they put Juan Williams on it. He was pretty consistent in cutting off guests who looked like they were calling in from the left side of our country and gave air time to right-wing points of view. And then there’s Cokie Roberts…

Perhaps they’ve hit a new low. Howard Zinn passed away the other day. Many local newspapers did not cover this news (they didn’t miss J.D. Salinger’s passing, though). That’s to be expected. But NPR went out of their way to use Zinn’s death to make more points with the right-wing, it seems. The Twittersphere noticed.

I hadn’t heard the program, of course. In such cases, I go off to the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) website to see if they’ve become agitated about the issue. Sure enough, they have an action alert on the subject of NPR’s unequal treatment of Zinn vs. right-wing deceaseds. It’s longer than a tweet, but very much richer. And I can say that a little birdie sent me.

Sure, people are entitled to differing opinions. NPR can try to be “fair and balanced,” just like Fox News, but unfortunately, they may be doing no better at times. FAIR points out that they didn’t attempt to be balanced when William F. Buckley passed away, for example. In the past, FAIR has also pointed out their dependence on war analysts with ties to the Pentagon or military contractors, among other controversies.

The Internet is a rich enough source of information that I can get my news elsewhere, of course. NPR is competing for my attention in a world where comparable news is but a click away.

Having now read the NPR program transcript, I see FAIR’s point, and also have increased respect for the ability of tweets to spread the word.

FAIR urges those who feel strongly about this to write to the NPR ombudsman. I wasn’t planning to do that, since I am not a regular listener. But heck, I’ll send them this, so they can understand why.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 02:03:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

President Obama is expected to announce his job plan today. Democracy Now reports this will be in it:

The $33 billion dollar package would provide incentives for hiring workers and raising wages. Businesses would receive a $5,000 dollar tax credit for each worker hired next year as well as reimbursements on Social Security taxes.

Next year? So how will that help this year? If anything, it could somewhat encourage employers not to hire in 2010.

This reminds me of all the shovel-ready incentives that have not happened. The average person seems not to benefit from this president’s plans. Not yet, anyway.

Foreclosures and job loss continue. Will Democrats suffer in the coming elections from abandoning their constituents while bailing out banksters? Maybe it’s unrelated to foreclosures, but this could start a trend:

Utah Democratic incumbent Congressmember Jim Matheson is facing a challenge from a coalition of progressives who have formed a grassroots effort called The Citizens’ Candidate to unseat him. The initiative is using Craigslist to find applicants willing to run against Matheson.

Using Craigslist to replace an incumbent. I love it.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 08:54:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

A couple of emails have flown back and forth about the validity of the data on train vs. tram accidents originally posted by Ian Lind and then by me.

What I have been looking for and not yet found is data on the reduction of car accidents resulting when transit is put in place. It may be that good numbers don’t exist.

My reasoning is that if cars are removed from the highways and streets, the number of accidents must also decline. In other words, whether at grade level or up in the air, you’re certainly much safer inside a rail car than braving the traffic in your own vehicle.

Within Portland’s retail corridor, served by a street-level system, parking is discouraged or non-existent. That was the plan (Honolulu has no such plan). My gut feeling is that with fewer cars there must be fewer accidents, and so any contribution by trams must be swamped out by reduction in vehicle accidents.

In other words, with planning, one can end up much safer with street level trams than with the car traffic that was there without them. Without planning (the Hawaii way), I have no idea what will happen. With stations up in the air, the streets are still subject to the same carnage as before.

I can’t say that this is anything more than thinking out loud at this point. At least it is a different way of looking at the claim that trams will be killing us more than rail-in-the-sky. Maybe yes, maybe no, but it will likely kill us less than we kill ourselves now.

At the same time, I need to stick with my earlier reasoning that the number of cars will not decrease. If a parking space downtown goes empty because its former occupant has chosen to commute by public transit, it will, as now, be filled immediately with someone else who has been waiting for a space. So no net reduction in cars from that sector. It would take reducing the number of parking spaces to make a dent in the number of cars. Logical, huh?

Shoppers also will likely continue to haul home purchases in their own vehicles by and large. You can’t do Costco via train (yet).

So I’ve probably muddled my own argument. Anyway, time to see if a cup of morning espresso will help clear up the thought processes a bit.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 08:26:00 AM   5 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

While Obama’s job approval ratings continue to slide, a certain other international figure is trying to make points in his own public announcements.

Yes, without the benefit of teleprompters, Osama Bin Laden holds forth on climate change.

I wonder if anyone is tracking the numbers on his approval rating within his own sphere of influence. There have been polls, but I haven’t yet located anything recent. This poll conducted in Pakistan is now three years old and obsolete, of course:

According to poll results, bin Laden has a 46 percent approval rating. Musharraf's support is 38 percent. U.S. President George W. Bush's approval: 9 percent.

A conclusion in that same article explains why we might learn something from such a poll if conducted today:

"Pakistan is the one Muslim nation that has nuclear weapons, and the people who want to use them against us -- like the Taliban and al Qaeda -- are more popular there than our allies like Musharraf."

Superimposing the job approval graphs of Obama and Osama might be interesting if it could be done.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 07:35:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday it risks diplomatic isolation and disruption to its energy supplies unless it helps keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. [AP, Clinton: China risks isolation over Iran, 1/29/2010]

Hillary, you’re kidding me, right? China has the USA by the you-know-whats. They hold our debt. They make everything that the American consumer wants and that make American business profitable, and they keep the prices low. You and who else will disrupt their energy supplies?

They can crush our economy by sneezing in our direction.

Our country’s idea of “diplomacy” seems still to depend on waving the big stick. Or in this case, the big wet noodle.

Well, let’s see if China caves. What Clinton is looking for is support in the UN for sanctions against Iran. Will they give in to her threats?

Update: Reinforcing the noodle. Yup, big stick diplomacy. This tweet came in just as I posted the above.

U.S. administration to notify Congress of plan to sell weapons, including helicopters and missile defense systems, to Taiwan -- AP, Reuters

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 07:13:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Nate Silver posts a long and thoughtful analysis of the decline in President Obama’s approval ratings this morning over at FiveThirtyEight.com, What Killed Obama's Approval Numbers? (1/29/2010). I am frequently in awe of this well-respected site.

While the analysis didn’t come to a firm conclusion, it did demonstrate some things along the way. For example, this chart, plotting Obama’s job approval rating against the days that were dominated by healthcare reform headlines (red bars), shows that the issue probably wasn’t responsible for that part of the trajectory of the decline.

Silver considers also the Sotomayor appointment, the situation in Iran, and even Sarah Palin’s quitting her job in Alaska.

Maybe it’s just too early to pin it down with data.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to give you any one incredibly satisfying answer here. The most basic reason for the decline in Obama's numbers, almost certainly, is that people's expectations for what he ought to have been able to accomplish on the economy have accelerated faster than his ability to do so. But beyond that, things are a little murky. The periods that represent the steepest declines in Obama's approval ratings are only loosely related to the periods that provided the most disappointing economic news.

While I might speculate on the meaning behind the news, it is good to have a more conservative, data-based analysis as an anchor. That keeps me going back to this website.

What I like about this site is that it attempts to locate the numbers that support a conclusion. Even Silver’s tweets are data-rich. For example:

Note that "only" 47 Democrats voted for Bernanke. He needed GOP votes to get him over the finish line.

or this one analyzing word usage in State of the Union tweets:

Most common nontrivial words in #sotu: american[s](46), people (33), america (24), jobs (23), work (20), families (17), businesses (17)

As a Tablet PC fan disappointed in the iPad announcement, I was interested to find, in this observation, that I’m not alone:

Interesting: Apple stock (#AAPL) dropped more than 4% today as investors evidently had second thoughts about the iPad.

So FiveThirtyEight.com is not just dry data and analysis. Try visit.

Totally unrelated to the above, I repeated a suggestion that flashed by in someone’s tweet and fed Obama’s speech into the tag cloud generator Wordle. Here’s the result (click for larger):

So that's what’s on his speechwriters’ minds anyway. It would be interesting to somehow feed Wordle with letters to the editor and see if there is a match with the people’s concerns.

Just an idle diversion.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/29/2010 06:49:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Testimony on HB2249 (pdf) is now posted on the Capitol website.

This is the bill that opens up campaign contributions from contractors who submit bids. The theory is that the bidding system means there’s no problem in taking moola from these bidders. The theory is wrong—in New York we called this “payola”, or pay-for-play. Bad bill. But guess what—the House Judiciary Committee, under chair Jon Riki Karamatsu, wouldn’t mind receiving some of those contributions, it seems. And the rest of his committee meekly went along with it.

Three organizations testified against this bill, all in opposition: the Campaign Spending Commission, Americans for Democratic Action/Hawaii, and Common Cause Hawaii. There was no testimony in favor of the bill, yet it passed.

Now it is fast-tracked through to the House floor and then will pass out of the House. Unless it is stopped.

This is a self-serving measure that is fraught with danger. It sets up a “pay-for-play” system which can only encourage corruption in the future (see: House travesty in the making—contractor payola bill railroaded to House floor, 1/27/2010, and Ian Lind’s Bill to remove restrictions on corporate contributions approved by House Judiciary Committee, 1/27/2010.)

It seems that when the Judiciary chair calls, the committee members fall into line. Those voting in favor of this bill were Representatives Karamatsu, Ito, Marumoto, McKelvey,  Mizuno, B. Oshiro, Souki, Tsuji and Wakai. Only Representatives Belatti voted No. Remember, though, it’s not just chair Karamatsu whose voice they obey. This bill could not have been fast-tracked without the backing of House Speaker Calvin Say.

If you would like to weigh in on this bill, for example, to tell legislators not to pass HB2249, it’s easy. Just email your representative, or email all of them at reps@capitol.hawaii.gov. A phone call is also good, as is a fax if you can do it. You can say anything, someone will mark it down if you call.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/28/2010 07:53:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Thanks to Danny Schechter who ran a snip from this article on his News Dissector blog today. It’s a must-read and I hope it will be shared and discussed.

Here is jst the start. Click the link to read the rest, which puts the recent Supreme Court ruling into political context, and much more.

YOUR DISAPPOINTMENT IN OBAMA IS YOUR TEACHING MOMENT, By Carolyn Baker

It's the end of the affair, and the stale taste of limerence stays on your tongue. You were promised the sun, moon, and stars, and you desperately wanted to believe it was real, especially after the betrayal of your former relationship of eight years. You had considered escaping-riding off into the sunset to another country where he couldn't find you, or so you hoped. You feared for your children and what he was setting them up for. You feared for yourself in the face of his brutality and intrusiveness into your life. Though you wouldn't admit it, you secretly prayed for assassination or some elaborate exposure that would take him down.

Then along came Mr. Wonderful with his irresistible smile and infectious inspiration. …

Carolyn Baker was one of the few writers commenting on the contradictions of Obama’s candidacy at a time when voters didn’t want to hear it. Read her article above on the broken love affair, and much more.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/28/2010 07:54:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

You could listen to President Obama promise to do something about jobs, or you could check the reality on the ground.

And that is: Billions for banks and bubkis for jobs.

Remember now, that corporations are people too, and that they run our government. They don’t necessarily want Americans to have jobs. General Motors felt burdened by having to employ actual workers, pay salaries, benefits and pensions, remember. So with the assistance of our sympathetic government, their cars will soon be produced in Mexico and probably later in China. No more worker problems for them if they can do that.

And now this: companies are recruiting and hiring cheaper employees from overseas and even displacing American workers—right here in the USA, and at a time when Americans are scrambling for any jobs they can get.

Danny Schechter’s guest this morning on his Progressive Radio program (I’ll put the link here when the audio is available to download) described how the Internet is full of “H1-B only want ads,” that is, US employers recruiting overseas for jobs in the USA.

That’s right, whether the recession is over or not, many US employers don’t want currently jobless workers back in the workforce. And just wait until they tell their buddies about this neat trick.

Danny’s guest has a website, Bright Future Jobs, where you can read about this and about a bill introduced to make it illegal. Of course, corporations will oppose making it illegal, and now that they can spend as much money as they like to kill the bill, let’s see how it goes.

But why shouldn’t Congress pass this bill, and others to create jobs and protect American workers, still un-bailed out even as bankers cash huge bonus checks over in New York? Remember: we send the actors to Congress but corporations write their lines.

I don’t know if a protectionist bill would itself be legal or a wise course of action. What is needed is to rethink our government and our economy and question the authority exerted by corporations over both.

It will take an overhaul of government to put voters back in the drivers seat. I wonder how long it will take for us to see that.

Meanwhile, while you wait, read and support Danny’s daily News Dissector blog. He was way ahead of the rest of the press in reporting on the dangers of the coming financial crisis. He is still the most astute commentator on economics and the condition of ordinary people, a voice not heard anywhere in the commercial press.

Going back to Obama’s speech, I’ll end with the beginning of Danny’s article today, which I hope you’ll read, Did President Obama’s State of The Union Speech Change The Fate of the Union??:

The State of the Union oration was classic Obama. It had no resemblance to the text we imagined and perhaps hoped for yesterday. It was positive, upbeat, even humorous at times, designed to charm, show compassion and seduce, It made you want to believe, believe in him, not necessarily in his recommendations. He went after the banks, but without a knockout punch, without really explaining his financial reform package and what’s required to wrestle this behemoth—there was no mention of pervasive financial crimes or the new Consumer Protection Agency.

He seemed most concerned with unifying the Congress, with reclaiming the moral high ground of the center without giving much to the right or the left. As the NY Times put it, “he tried to recapture the magic of the “Yes We Can Campaign” after a year of “no we can’t governing.”

There’s no way out of the recession, out of the foreclosures and the bankruptcies, unless Americans can find jobs. Corporations don’t care about jobs, that’s not what they are about. If everything were made in China it wouldn’t bother the companies that profit from selling these things. Not for a moment.

I am pretty sure the next election will be very interesting, as voters awaken to what we’ve been given by our Congressional incumbents. Bubkis.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/28/2010 06:55:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

How about a video tour of the Huakai, the second Hawaii Superferry that they never sent here? The one with the loading ramp. See how well it works—much better than the barge kludge on the one they did send us.

Here’s a video from a Norfolk, Virginia TV station, WTKR, that permits embedding it on a blog. Try clicking on the full screen button.

Hawaii is getting a bit of publicity out of this, anyway.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/27/2010 10:27:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

See this Boston Globe article or try google. I’m sure there will be more on Democracy Now! and elsewhere tomorrow.

"His writings have changed the consciousness of a generation, and helped open new paths to understanding and its crucial meaning for our lives," Noam Chomsky, the left-wing activist and MIT professor, once wrote of Dr. Zinn. "When action has been called for, one could always be confident that he would be on the front lines, an example and trustworthy guide."

For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn's best-known book, "A People's History of the United States" (1980), had for its heroes not the Founding Fathers -- many of them slaveholders and deeply attached to the status quo, as Dr. Zinn was quick to point out -- but rather the farmers of Shays' Rebellion and the union organizers of the 1930s.

Update: I know many readers don’t click to read the comments, so I wanted to add this one here in the main article:

Bart Dame has left a new comment on your post " Howard Zinn dies of heart attack at 87":

This saddens me. He was a major intellectual influence on my life--though he cannot be held responsible for everything I have done (or not done).

I had the fortune of being his chauffeur when he came to Honolulu about 20 years ago. We swam at Kaimana Beach, floating off Waikiki and talking US history and politics. When I last heard him on Democracy Now a few weeks ago, I was conscious of how frail his once strong voice had become.

About a month ago, I was in whatever they now call Magoo's, eating beer and drinking pizza with a friend. The waitress told us she was majoring in History, so I asked her about Howard Zinn's books. She had never heard of him. She said she is specializing in Classical Greek and Roman history. So I asked her about Izzy Stone's book on Socrates. Michael Parenti's book on the Assassination of Caesar? Again, a blank stare. (Young people today!)

Tonight I will read a chapter of the People's History and savor his deeply humanitarian outlook in memory of a great, gentle man.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/27/2010 02:36:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The House has greased the skids under a bill designed to feed corruption in state government. Although the 2010 session has barely begun, a bill to legalize pay-to-play in state procurement is suddenly headed to the House floor for a vote.

Many people complain that the legislative process is slow and unwieldy. Bills crawl from committee to committee, and often falter along the way if supporters can’t get to each hearing to submit testimony. When a bill clears one house, it then “crosses over” to the other and must run the gauntlet all over again.

Not this bill. Judiciary Chair Jon Riki Karamatsu, caught on video last session (see: Hawaii legislators lusting for corporate lucre) in an embarrassing bid  to boost campaign contributions ostensibly so he could donate some to favorite charities, has been allowed by House Speaker Calvin Say to pull a fast move in the opening moments of the 2010 legislative session.

Yesterday House leadership (and this could not have been done without the conniving of Speaker Say) fast-tracked a bill to the floor that will lift restrictions on campaign contributions by contractors holding competitive contracts. The bill (HB 2249) will not be heard by any other House committee.

The bill was introduced by only one House member: John Riki Karamatsu himself, and was exempted by the Speaker from the usual committee-by-committee review that other legislation typically endures. It was passed by the Judiciary committee by recommendation of one House chair: John Riki Karamatsu himself.

This bill opens the floodgates for what we used to call in New York “the ol’ payola ” because it permits and encourages bribes contributions intended to influence the procurement process. Why import New York-style corruption to Hawaii?

The way this works is that a contractor pays now and gets the contract (sole-source or competitive, doesn’t matter) later.

The competitive bidding process depends on contractors fulfilling criteria that are built into each RFP (Request for Proposal). In Hawaii law, the criteria, which you will find in an RFP expressed as a point system, must be strictly evaluated to determine the winning bid. Disputes over this lead to challenges and lawsuits such as the ones that the Hawaii Office of Elections is facing.

The process is commonly manipulated to favor particular bidders. In other words, it’s quite legal for the procuring authority to set the specs and point criteria to favor the goods or services provided by a single, favored contractor or supplier.

Both state and municipal contracts can fall victim to this kind of favoritism and corruption. It’s how cronies are rewarded for being cronies.

If Say and Karamatsu think they can slip this by unnoticed, they’ve failed already. Common Cause Hawaii has raised objections. Barbara Wong, state Campaign Spending Commission executive director, has spoken out against it.

The question now is whether other House members will join to block this maneuver. Last year they did.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/27/2010 06:01:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The Huakai actually never made it to Hawaii, though Hawaii Superferry is painted on its side. (click for larger image)

Now it is carrying the state’s name to Haiti, as the military transport vessel many predicted was its intended use to start with. A cruel fate has pressed Huakai into service as a military transport and supply vessel but for humanitarian relief, not for war.

This is a task that the two superferries are very well suited to. Their large capacity and speed make them ideal transport vessels for supplies, equipment and cargo. In Hawaii, the superferries were tariffed only as passenger carriers.

Fifty-four soldiers from the 689th Rapid Port Opening Element are aboard the superferry Huakai, which is owned by the U.S. Maritime Administration and controlled by Military Sealift Command. About 70 soldiers from Eustis' 7th Sustainment Brigade are also bound for Haiti. [The Virginia Pilot, Soldiers from Fort Eustis heading to Haiti aboard superferry, 1/27/2010]

Another article notes that the ship will also carry relief supplies:

The U.S. Army's Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) will send its 597th Transportation Brigade to Port-au-Prince to deliver humanitarian supplies.

In a press release, the SDDC noted that the Huakai "traditionally only moves passengers," but for this mission the Maritime Administration has given operational control of the vessel to the Military Sealift Command to deliver equipment and cargo as well as military personnel. [The Daily Press (Newport News, VA, Superferry to depart from Fort Eustis bound for Haiti, 1/27/2010]

Hawaii Superferry, the company, had not brought in enough revenue, according to independent estimates, and predictably ended in bankruptcy shortly after a Hawaii Supreme Court ruling stopped Huakai’s sister ship, Alakai, dead in the water. .

Although the ruling did not relate to the company’s financial condition, it precipitated the bankruptcy, and ultimately the Maritime Administration (MARAD) took possession of the two vessels.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/27/2010 05:40:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

 Paul Krugman, NY Times - It's appalling on every level. It's bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with "the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon" . . .

It's bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.

And it's a betrayal of everything Obama's supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view - and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, "I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy."

David Sirota, Open Left - This is actually worse - way worse - than John McCain's campaign proposal for across-the-board cuts, as across-the-board cuts would have hit the massive and bloated Pentagon budget. Instead, the Obama administration is specifically and exclusively targeting social safety-net spending for a budget freeze (read: cut in real, inflation-adjusted dollars). Yes, cutting social safety-net programs during a recession, while increasing spending on wars, underwriting a no-strings-attached bank bailout and pushing a health care bill that is a massive giveaway to the insurance and drug companies. This is textbook Selective Deficit Disorder and it is grotesque. Indefensibly grotesque.

Paul Rosenberg, Open Left - Obama is now intentionally recreating FDR's mistake of 1937, when he prematurely cut back spending to try to balance the budget, and sent the country into a new recession. . .

The rationale is that he wants to appease folks worried about runaway deficits. Which is just what FDR was worried about in 1937.

This is Bush-style idiocy. There is no other word for it.

Adding insult to injury, at the same time, he's also proposing more Ronald Reagan/GW Bush tax cuts. . . which will, of course, increase the runaway deficits.

And he's also talking about privatizing NASA. Because privatizing the Pentagon turned out so great.

It's time to seriously start talking about primarying Obama in 2012. He's now officially the most conservative Democratic President since Grover Cleveland. And the dumbest one since James Buchanan.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/26/2010 08:36:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

Danny Schechter, the News Dissector, found this one. He did the work but I want to snip it for you. (Check out the News Dissector blog and please support his good work.)

Sanders Slams Bernanke:

The American people today are suffering through the worst economy since the Great Depression with 17.3 percent of the American workforce either unemployed or underemployed. Millions more have lost their homes, their savings, their health care and their pensions. At a time like this let me provide reasons why Ben Bernanke should not be confirmed as chairman of the Fed.

1) Not only was Mr. Bernanke first nominated to the Fed by President George W. Bush, but he served in the Bush administration as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. Let us never forget that the Bush years, even before the collapse of Wall Street, were an economic disaster for the average American. Mr. Bernanke, who was recently endorsed for reappointment by Alan Greenspan, played a major role in the deregulatory efforts that enabled major financial institutions to engage in reckless and illegal behavior. The American people gave us the responsibility to bring about change, not the maintenance of the status quo. Why, at this difficult moment in American history, should we reappoint Wall Street’s candidate as chairman of the Fed?

2) One of the main functions of the Fed is to maintain the safety and soundness of our financial system. No one can deny that Mr. Bernanke, as chairman of the Fed, was asleep at the wheel while Wall Street became the largest gambling casino in the history of the world and hurtled into insolvency – at enormous cost to our country. Not since the Great Depression has our financial system been as unsafe, unsound and unstable than under Ben Bernanke’s tenure as chairman of the Fed. Why should Mr. Bernanke be rewarded with reappointment after he failed so terribly to do his job?

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/26/2010 02:28:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The FBI, alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in downtown New Orleans, arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility.

FBI Special Agent Steven Rayes alleges that O'Keefe aided and abetted two others, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, who dressed up as employees of a telephone company and attempted to interfere with the office's telephone system. [nola.com, ACORN gotcha man among four arrested for attempting to bug Mary Landrieu's office, 1/26/2010]

This is the guy who dressed as a pimp in the video that got Acorn into trouble. Click link above for the complete article, or find more on Google News.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/26/2010 10:45:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

As job losses mount in the USA, as millions are losing their homes and medical insurance and are driven into bankruptcy, our government is planning one more bailout—of the Taliban.

An international fund amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars will be established this week in a bid to buy off Taliban leaders in Afghanistan.

An outline for the strategy, which will be principally funded by the US, Japan and Britain, was reported to have been drafted at a meeting in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago of top-level diplomats from 20 countries. [The National, Taliban 'buy out' fund to cost hundreds of millions, 1/26/2010]

The good news is that Obama may finally be developing some appreciation of the need for job creation. From the same article:

Clare Lockhart, chief executive of the Institute for State Effectiveness, a think tank in Washington, and a former adviser to the UN and Afghan government, said unemployment was one of the root causes of insurgency and must be addressed.

“One of the reasons why young men are joining up various armed forces – whether the government forces, armed insurgent groups or just criminal gangs – is that there is no employment or livelihood. So it is very circular,” she said.

“To address some of the root causes of instability one does need to focus on job creation.”

It’s great to see so much sympathy for the young men in the Taliban. If only our president cared as much for the teeming jobless in his own country.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/25/2010 10:01:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Even as HMSA cries about costs, raises your insurance premiums and asks for employee sacrifices, they have flown in an expensive consultant from Texas on perhaps two occasions—to doodle for them at meetings.

A Google image search for HMSA hit this one:

Click the image to go to the Bytemarks article. Hmm… that leads to HMSA Leadership Summit – Honolulu, HI (1/24/2010), a current article (just yesterday) on the website of a consultant in Austin, Texas, that includes two HMSA doodles and starts off:

HMSA (Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Hawai’i) has risen to the top of my client list due to the nature of the projects we’re involved with and my deep respect for the efforts of the leadership and the Innovation Team.

What is HMSA getting for this big expenditure? Click the picture on that website for a larger image and see if you can figure it out.

If they want illustrations drawn during their meetings, why not either do it themselves or hire a local artist or consultant?

I suppose the value of these doodles can be disputed, but more typically, meetings are diagrammed by means of mind-mapping. For example, see A Beginners Guide to Mind Mapping Meetings, which includes this example:
Anybody can do this either on a whiteboard, on paper, or using any of several free or inexpensive computer programs. The technique shows the relationships between ideas and subjects, which the doodle does not. I suggest that this technique is more useful than the doodle anyway.

Should your medication or doctor’s procedure be denied, remember that HMSA is happy to spend money on doodling instead of on you.

If you’re a doctor whose reimbursement doesn’t cover costs, envy this consultant.

If you’re an HMSA employee asked to sacrifice for the company, wonder why you could not sketch on the whiteboard instead of an expensive Texas consultant flown in to do it (and you could probably produce something more meaningful, as an insider).

If you are the Insurance Commissioner considering a rate increase  application, I hope you’ll ask about the need for spending like this that then gets charged to insurance premiums.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/25/2010 09:02:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Should Congress pass some form of the House or Senate health insurance reform legislation, or is it actually a danger to our health?

Check out this story, which may help you decide: Whistleblower reveals how insurers can game healthcare bill (The Raw Story, 1/25/2010). For example, we were told that pre-exiting conditions could no longer prevent someone from being insured. Well, yes, but…

Though Senate bill cuts 'pre-existing conditions,' it still allows insurance companies to create 'pre-existing' categories to raise rates

The Democrats' healthcare overhaul, billed as a monumental game-changer for Americans' health insurance coverage, provides numerous loopholes for health insurance companies which will allow them to raise rates to protect profit margins, a health insurance whistleblower says.
…
While prohibitions on such practices as denying healthcare to people with pre-existing conditions remain in the legislation, [whistleblower Wendell] Potter noted that the Senate bill, in particular, provides the insurance companies with “all the flexibility they need” to more than make up for any profits lost due to new reform measures and to prevent people from accessing coverage.

He pointed out, for example, that “health factors” such as chronic diseases and age would continue to play into how much individuals can be charged in premiums and how many of them may be forced into high deductible plans.

“What they will be doing, what they can in the Senate bill, is charge people significantly more if they have certain health factors,” Potter said. “And it would be pretty much up to the industry to decide what those health factors are. You could have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes. You could be overweight, have a history of tobacco use. There definitely would be a wide range of things that the insurance industry would be able to look at and determine whether or not to charge you more.”

What happens is that when someone needs to access the coverage, already very expensive, the high deductibles and copayments force the patient into bankruptcy.

“What worries me,” [Potter] said, “is people who are forced to buy coverage and all they can afford to buy is a high deductible. And if they get really sick then they have to pay so much out of their own pockets that they’re going to be filing for bankruptcy and losing their homes.”

Where is the “bait and switch?”

Wendell Potter, a twenty-year veteran of the insurance industry and former vice president of communications for Cigna, warns that current healthcare legislation does nothing to prevent the insurance industry from continuing its ongoing practice of increasingly shifting healthcare costs to consumers.

A form of bait-and-switch, such practices often set up individuals, families and small businesses for inadequate or unaffordable access and a continued looming threat of financial ruin. The overlooked element, Potter says, is that insurance companies will be able to claim they are reducing premiums by forcing more Americans to pay higher deductibles and offering less coverage.

Did your Congressperson tell you that this reform is a good thing? Guess what—they lied to you.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/24/2010 08:33:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The Tucson Sentinel launched today—a non-profit web newspaper. I had a hard time snipping from their “Hello World” article, don’t know why, but found a way to bring you some snippets:

After months of planning and preparation, it’s time to take TucsonSentinel.com for a shakedown cruise. The local independent nonprofit news site launched Friday morning.
…
We've established a network of local correspondents who are dedicated to bringing you quality and timely coverage on a variety of beats

The border and immigration, local government, Tucson's lively music scene, Wildcat sports and more are topics that TucsonSentinel.com will focus on

TucsonSentinel.com is a local independent nonprofit news organization that offers professional reporting and community conversation on issues that affect Tucson

We operate a website that offers quality, accessible journalism on local and national events and provides a platform for civic engagement.

With a staff of professional reporters and editors, freelance writers and public contributors, TucsonSentinel.com acts as a honest broker of information, filling the need for a virtual roundtable where the community can discuss the issues of the day.

Our goal is to build a sustainable nonprofit business model that delivers quality reporting in a competitive media environment. TucsonSentinel.com provides evenhanded professionally produced journalism.

While thousands of journalism jobs across the country have vanished, TucsonSentinel.com continues the in-depth reporting and memorable storytelling that is essential to democracy.

From the look of the website, they do indeed plan to follow a traditional model of journalism.

It’s great to see another experiment taking off. Some will succeed, some fail, and that’s where we are today as the newspaper shakeout continues.

Of course, we in Hawaii are eagerly awaiting the launch of Peer News.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/24/2010 06:34:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Democrats failed a test in Massachusetts. There’s a buzz going that they are about to face and fail another, exemplified by this tweet that fluttered by earlier today:

ggreenwald    RT @markos RT @SamSeder: If Bernanke is not reconfirmed as chair, our economy could plunge into crisis unseen since Bernanke chaired the fed

(I’m amazed at how having to express something in 140 characters or less leads sometimes to great clarity of expression.)

For those whose attention span is long enough, some good analysis is emerging that took more time to write than a quick tweet.

Here’s a gem from After the Massachusetts Massacre, by Frank Rich (CommonDreams.org, 1/24/2010)

Obama’s plight has been unchanged for months. Neither in action nor in message is he in front of the anger roiling a country where high unemployment remains unchecked and spiraling foreclosures are demolishing the bedrock American dream of home ownership. The president is no longer seen as a savior but as a captive of the interests who ginned up the mess and still profit, hugely, from it.

I’d like to snip backwards in this article. Here’s how it begun. I urge you to read the whole thing:

It was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown’s State Senate vote) in 2006. It was not a harbinger of a resurgent G.O.P., whose numbers remain in the toilet. Brown had the good sense not to identify himself as a Republican in either his campaign advertising or his victory speech.

And yet Tuesday’s special election was a dire omen for this White House. If the administration sticks to this trajectory, all bets are off for the political future of a president who rode into office blessed with more high hopes, good will and serious promise than any in modern memory. It’s time for him to stop deluding himself.

Read partway down why healthcare opponents are able to say anything they want about the bill. It’s because nobody knows what the bills are about, all these months later. Read how Obama has frittered away his political capital by doing nothing useful on what was supposed to be his signature achievement.

So back to the tweet. What will happen with Bernanke? The way things are going, I imagine a reconfirmation. I can hear echoes of an Obama speech in my head in advance. That’s a good trick, but I am losing patience with his high-flying rhetoric. (Bush was more amusing, anyway, when he did speak publicly.) What we need is an end to foreclosures (a complete stop) and meaningful action on jobs. Oh, and single payer health care. Not another speech.

Here’s another good article from the same website, this one from Norman Solomon, Democrats Boosting Right-Wing Populism (CommonDreams.org, 1/20/2010)

In his triumphant speech on election night, the next senator from Massachusetts should have thanked top Democrats in Washington for all they did to make his victory possible.

For a year now, leading Democrats have steadily embraced more corporate formulas for "healthcare reform." In the name of political realism, they have demobilized and demoralized the Democratic base. In the process, they've fueled right-wing populism.

The Democratic leadership on healthcare and so much else -- including bank bailouts, financial services, foreclosures and foreign policy -- has been so corporate that Republicans have found it easy to play populist.

Do the Democrats and Obama think that we don’t know that:

Key provisions -- such as a mandate requiring individuals to buy private health insurance without a public option -- are giveaways to mega-corporations on a scale so vast that it boggles the mind.

Such a federal healthcare law -- massively combining an intrusive government mandate with corporate power -- would be a godsend to right-wing populism for decades.

Just for a moment, combine the massive giveaway to the insurance and drug industry that this so-called “reform” would bring with the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling unleashing corporate attack ads without limit. Any Congressperson who decides to oppose insurance industry power would be mowed down by night-and-day TV attack ads.

Perhaps a true healthcare reform law is already impossible.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/24/2010 03:06:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

There is a current report from Pakistan that a US drone has been shot down Sunday in the North Waziristan region of Pakistan.

Pakistanis are justifiably angry at the death and destruction wrought by the US on innocent men, women and children by these drones. An uncaring and largely uninformed American populous has not sprung up to object to the deaths of hundreds of people in far-off Pakistan at the hands of our government.

In googling around for more on this story, I discovered several news articles going ‘way back that refute US claims that militant leaders were killed in the drone strikes. First comes the article (often by the Associated Press) with the claim that the targeted person was killed. That’s followed by other articles indicating he is still alive, or wasn’t there when the dozen or so civilians were killed by the drone.

You’ve probably read that the repeated strikes and civilian deaths are helping the Taliban recruit. In fact, outside of the US, the whole world has access to reports, including pictures of the deaths and destruction of many of the drone attacks. Perhaps US citizens would object also if they knew about it, but our commercial press prefers to disappear this news.

And so the killing goes on, in our name.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/24/2010 02:13:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“I guess for America's rulers a new pantsuit is more valuable than the lives of poor, Black Haitians.”

No, I’m not going to snip, go read this first-hand report:

Occupation in Humanitarian Clothing, by Jesse Hagopian (1/24/2010).

Doctors Without Borders also complained about their flights being diverted or delayed. One of their planes carrying 12 tons of medical supplies was turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport. One of the diverted flights carried the first part of a shipment of inflatable field hospitals, including two operating theaters, an ICU, 100 beds, an emergency room and equipment for sterilizing material (according to the second link above).

This is a video clip from the website of Doctors Without Borders. It’s not a very exciting video, it just illustrates the grunt work that has to be done to set up to save lives. This is what the US military occupation was delaying. I believe this video was intended as background for other reporting.

Disappeared News

The graphic scenes of death and destruction have largely not appeared in US coverage, though the rest of the world got the picture.

Just as the rapid response from China and even Iceland was effectively disappeared, so also is news of these flight diversions by the US military. It seems there is also another logistics problem, armies of journalists tying up resources as they fly into Haiti to set up cameras. Priority should go to relief supplies, equipment and personnel, not to 75-person press teams.

Why not some honest reporting from a small pool of reporters, particularly when the American news that comes out is so slanted?

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/24/2010 02:00:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

A minor misunderstanding developed after Ian Lind posted an article on Honolulu Managing Director Kirk Caldwell’s $250 per plate breakfast fundraiser in Washington, DC. It seems Caldwell was concerned that Ian implied he was on City business when he held his fundraiser. Ian responded to that one in an article on Friday.

My question, though, is which out-of-town corporations or special interests is Caldwell now beholden to? Caldwell may run for mayor. Mayor of Honolulu, not of the District of Columbia.

Caldwell holding a fundraiser out of state is not much different in my book from Big Island Rep. Bob Herkes holding an expensive “Breakfast with Bob” fundraiser in Honolulu. Herkes’ constituents are not in Honolulu, only big buck lobbyists and corporations are here paying for influence over his decisions. It’s the same for Caldwell. Remember, corporations invest. Only your neighbors and relatives give money ‘cause they like you.

Kirk Caldwell is now pre-owned. There should be a report eventually on who contributed what.

Should he run for mayor, remember that it’s likely some big banks or corporations already have a stake in his ascendency to the mayorship.

What they will want from him should he win is anyone’s guess, but when the phone rings from Washington, you can bet he’ll answer the call.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/23/2010 10:26:00 PM   3 comments - add your comment links to this post

For some light reading (it’s only 28 pages), here is the report to the 2010 legislature of the Task Force on Reinventing Government (make it full screen by clicking Fullscreen near the top, or download a copy from the link):

On first reading, I found this report to be amazingly short on citations and lacking in substantiation for its recommendations. With regard to the Department of Education alone, “reinventing” it would seem to require far more depth and understanding than the committee applied to the task. And probably a hundred more pages.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/23/2010 09:34:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I’m amazed that conversation today has alternated between (joy) the Hawaii Senate’s passage of the civil union bill with a veto-proof margin, and (consternation) the implications of the Supreme Court ruling that will allow corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns.

This afternoon I caught up with some podcasts including one of last night’s news from WBAI in New York. One short segment of that was a scary interview about the Supreme Court ruling.

In a nutshell: Any lawmaker who gets in the way of a giant corporation will be creamed by a barrage of attack ads.

Unfortunately there isn’t any transcript. The interview is only four minutes, so I clipped it out for you. Here it is.

A snip of Attorney and authorJason Flores Williams interviewed on Friday’s WBAI news (1/22/2010).

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/23/2010 08:46:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Hawaii’s legislature has a record of progressive lawmaking that fits the temper of the Islands. We are mostly liberal at heart. Although there are dark clouds above as the death toll mounts in Haiti, and despite the adjustment in Massachusetts as Obama supporters sent the boss a clear message, a ray of sunlight shone into the Hawaii State Capitol today.

Thank goodness for Twitter. I was on the road, but tweets from @hawaiisenate liveblogging the debate on the civil unions bill came rushing into my cell phone. It was almost like being there, but without the parking hassle.

A short time after the roll-call vote was tweeted, the breaking news was everywhere on Twitter:

Hawaii Senate approves same-sex civil unions, setting stage for final passage by House and showdown with GOP Gov. Lingle – AP

And to think, I remember when phones were big, black objects on the desk or the wall, with metal dials and bells inside, and twitter wasn’t even a figment of the imagination. Now I have a social network tool in my pocket that goes where I go, eats what I eat, etc.

Isn’t science wonderful?

The bill isn’t law yet, but today it overcame a major hurdle. Forces against passage will redouble, with threats to lawmakers escalating. There is little chance that the White Shirts will go back to their churches and lick their wounds. Quite the opposite, next comes the Crusade.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/22/2010 05:19:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Yesterday the Advertiser building on Kapiolani Boulevard may have rattled a bit as eBay founder Pierre Omidyar announced his selection of editor to lead his Peer News venture. A rush transcript of his conference call for local reporters is here, thanks to Ryan Ozawa.

Omidyar did not choose a local journalist to head his Hawaii-based venture, but grabbed one of the best and best known in the country. John Temple, who was editor and publisher of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, which shut down after 150 years in early 2009. Temple will be relocating to Hawaii. He tweets at @johntemplepn. From his web page, a snip of his background:

Under his leadership, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other national awards for journalistic excellence. Temple also served the E.W. Scripps Co., owner of the Rocky, as vice president/news of the newspaper division.

If Omidyar just wanted to do journalism, he could probably have bought the Advertiser. Clearly, he has something else in mind. At a time when experienced journalists are exhausting their unemployment benefits, Peer News is hiring. The solicitation notes that “Hawaii experience is a plus” but, competition to report for Peer News is not limited to the Islands.

Whatever Omidyar’s plans may be, and he has not defined a business model, he has the ability to give Peer News the required kick start. The impact should be felt by our traditional media if not now, very shortly.

The Advertiser has developed a Web presence even as its print edition shrinks. With Gannett support, its web page is quite capable, and in fact, the strongest source of breaking news in Hawaii at this time. This leads to some curious outcomes, however, for the paper. It’s possible to pick up a breaking story from their website and develop and publish it on the web before it appears in print the next day. Probably that’s inevitable. Along with the slow growth of web advertising revenue, it shows that the web as a safety net for print papers may not yet be what they hoped for.

Imagine, though, that there was an alternative, capable and credible source of information on the web in Hawaii. Imagine that web surfers would no longer be so dependent on the Advertiser for their news and in-depth local information. Imagine that local news were tweeted to you from a new, alternate and reader-centered source.

While advertising-dependent paper and TV newsrooms are stretched thin and overworked due to downsizing, a web venture has the potential of expanding its breadth and depth of coverage. This must be a concern for the Advertiser, and will be for Gannett, if their web future can be undercut by a startup. Note that Peer News doesn’t have to maintain either an expensive printing plant nor run intrusive ads to pay for a power-hungry transmitter farm.

The Advertiser has recently been advertising (natch) on full-page spreads how many readers they reach. Peer News, even before it starts, has sparked interest far beyond anything the Advertiser can generate or counter. Readers are fickle, and competition could easily undercut the Advertiser’s subscription base, particularly as the relative value of their $206 annual cost is confronted by subscribers (Pierre, have you thought of running comics pages? That would grab me…).

Successful competition would also threaten the Advertiser as a player in controlling the public dialogue on behalf of their advertisers and parent, Gannett.

All eyes are on Omidyar, and I’ll bet his fat file of resumes might include some from current newspaper staffers as well as us blogger wannabes.

The best idea of what Omidyar and Temple may be hoping for may be in this snip from Ryan’s rush transcript of yesterday’s phone call:

“I think at a high level the idea is to provide a set of tools to enable the community to better learn what’s going on, understand, and debate the issues that face our community. That’s community-wide, local focus. And I want to emphasize that we’re not looking to create a news product that’s solely there to inform. One of the benefits of the web is engaging the community, providing value and serving their aspirations to have an impact. And so that should help paint the picture for you on the type of content and the audience.”

Some web experiments have changed course. One that I followed closely is The Faster Times. Their staff page still includes, towards the bottom, an essay on their original purpose. Here’s a snip:

The Faster Times is a collective of great journalists who have come together to try something new. As we launch this July, we will have more than a hundred correspondents in over 20 countries. We have someone on the ground in Kenya and someone else reporting from Lebanon. Our arts section will cover not just film and books, but also theater and dance and photography. We will launch with seven writers on books alone. These writers are not “citizen journalists” but among the most accomplished and recognized names in their respective fields.

I ran a story by one of their correspondents (with his permission) before the startup, a June 11, 2009 analysis of Obama’s speech at that time in Cairo by Toufic Haddad. How promising, I thought, that Sam Apple, publisher of The Faster Times, could have foreign correspondents at a time when traditional papers have closed their overseas bureaus.

Well, if you click on the link, today’s Faster Times looks like the Huffington Post and reads like the New York Post. A featured article discusses Madonna’s chin hairs. This may be a successful business model, but it’s not what I expected.

The Voice of San Diego is still going strong and is very much traditional in its approach. So is ProPublica, “Journalism in the public interest.” Hawaii’s great experiment right now is The Hawaii Independent, really in a startup phase, and following a hyper-local model.

At the same time, liberal media is in trouble. While Rush Limbaugh rakes in $50 million a year, Air America just went out of business yesterday. The liberal media that Rush complains about doesn’t exist—most American paper, TV or radio media lean demonstrably toward the Right.

So all eyes are on Omidyar right now as he beings his experiment, and strangely enough, it will begin right here, in the backyard of the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star-Bulletin.

Fasten your seat belts and be ready for some action in Hawaii’s media scene.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/22/2010 11:30:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“There's a real populist anger out there.”

The Massachusetts loss of Ted Kennedy’s seat has brought forth some strong criticism of Barack Obama and the Democrats in power.

The Obama Brand Implodes (TaylorMarsh.com, 1/20/2010):

In the special election to replace Edward M. Kennedy, Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership were handed their heads in the most stunning, avoidable repudiation of ineptitude in recent political memory.

I’m going to skip a big chunk (please read the complete article) and pick up here:

All of this manifesting after the welcome relief of voters finally getting rid of the Bush-Cheney regime, which had sullied the doorstep of our democracy on every front, the people eager and ready for the change and hope promised from Barack Obama. Who walked into Washington with the wind at his back, the press at his feet, and the world waiting for him to begin delivering on all that his candidacy promised. Certainly expectations were high, way too high, but it wouldn’t have taken much to appease the anxiousness everyone felt at what we all knew was possible, because Democratic policies were just what the voters had ordered.

Instead, Barack Obama reached across the aisle and let the Republicans stymie the Democratic agenda on the altar of Let’s Make A Deal, which they had no intention of doing. For one full year Pres. Obama has laid back, waited, and let things spin completely out of control until even Ted Kennedy’s old seat has been squandered on the altar of bipartisanship.

The President pretending he wasn’t a Democrat so much as some mediator in a policy dispute, making sure not to pick his own side over the other.

A Moveon.org poll indicates that Obama voters essentially stayed home in Massachusetts:

A poll was conducted immediately after the election last night of 1000 registered Massachusetts voters who voted for Obama in 2008. Half of the respondents voted in the MA special election for Republican candidate Scott Brown; half of the respondents did not vote at all. The poll definitively shows that voters who stayed home and voters who switched party allegiance share very common frustration and anger at an economy that continues to work better for Wall Street than Main Street.

There's a real populist anger out there. Voters worry that Democrats in power have not done enough to combat the policies of the Bush era. Both sets of voters wanted stronger, more progressive action on health care reform, as well. In summary, the poll shows that the party who fights corporate interests—especially on making the economy work for most Americans—will win the confidence of the voters. [moveon.org, Research 2000 Poll Results, January 19, 2010, 1/19/2010]

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/21/2010 06:17:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Mitch Stewart, the Executive Director of Organizing for America, the bunch that send out fundraising emails over the signature of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, sent what to me is a really lame email today, after the Dems lost the race in Massachusetts.

Reading it, I think they just don’t get it. They don’t understand that their actions are catching up to their rhetoric. They don’t get that they’ve lied and failed to deliver, so bad things might happen to them.

Yesterday's disappointing election results show deep discontent with the pace of change. I know the OFA community and the President share that frustration.

We also saw what we knew to be true all along: Any change worth making is hard and will be fought at every turn. While it doesn't take away the sting of this loss, there is no road to real change without setbacks along the way.

We could have simply sought to do things that were easy, that wouldn't stir up controversy. But changes that aren't controversial rarely solve the problem.

Our country continues to face the same fundamental challenges it faced yesterday. Our health care system still needs reform. Wall Street still needs to be held accountable. We still need to create good jobs. And we still need to continue building a clean energy economy.

The President isn't walking away from these challenges. In fact, his determination and resolve are only stronger. We must match that commitment with our own.

But it won't be easy. Real change never is. For that reason, I am grateful you're part of this fight with us.

Thank you,

Mitch

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Notice he talks about “real change.” Obama has made some change, of course, and it’s better to have him in the White House than McCain if its change we want.

But basically, he has reneged on campaign promises and failed to deliver key changes like health care reform, closing Guantanamo, and so forth, that in many respects he is indistinguishable from Bush. With regard to the wars and killing innocent civilians, he may prove worse than Bush. His foreign policy stinks. He is allowing Israel to proceed with genocide, and supported the illegal overthrow of the elected president of Honduras.

We’re witnessing how he militarizes Haiti instead of offering the rapid relief they so desperately need. Who runs this country? The Pentagon? The Republicans?

No, Mitch, we are frustrated, but not only by yesterday’s election, which will indeed make healthcare reform less likely unless Democrats are willing to dig in and wait out an unpopular filibuster.

You bear some responsibility for our frustration by demanding support and contributions and then failing to deliver.

Our country continues to face the same fundamental challenges it faced yesterday.

Yes. You’re beginning to understand. We were promised change and didn’t get it.

Our health care system still needs reform.

Yes, and Obama caved easily on the public option, didn’t even push for single-payer, which is favored by the majority of Americans.

Wall Street still needs to be held accountable.

No, they need to be stopped. Usury has increased. Foreclosures have accelerated, not diminished. The “solutions” have not benefitted anyone but a tiny, almost negligible, percentage.

Banks are more profitable than ever. And although they can borrow money at essentially no cost, they are not investing in the economy or saving homes. This goes beyond accountability. And we know that they pay off both Congress and the President to have their way.

We still need to create good jobs.

This is Obama’s and the Democrat’s biggest failure, IMHO. You’re demonstrating that you don’t care at all about us, except that you want our contributions.

General Motors investors (banks, etc.) were bailed out, but workers lost their jobs. Those jobs won’t come back as production moves to Mexico or even to China. Obama’s “rescue” of GM likely cost jobs permanently.

Don’t be surprised if some of the voters are fed up enough to try something else. Massachusetts may be just the beginning. Not having a job is a great incentive to make change happen in the voting booth.

And we still need to continue building a clean energy economy.

So please get busy, and stop enriching your banker friends with this carbon credit scheme. Stop trying to fool the world using 2005 as the basis for carbon reduction goals (of course, Obama fooled no one in Copenhagen).

“Change” will continue to be the theme in future elections, I think—but that would be mostly at Democrats’ expense.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/20/2010 07:57:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Thanks to Ian Lind for doing the research on comparative accident rates for different transit systems. It’s nice to set propaganda straight sometimes. The claims that we’d be putting our lives at risk if the AIA plan succeeds are bogus, I felt, but Ian did the research that I think shows it.

You’ll find the details, links and a chart in his article, along with a discussion about paid blogging for Mufi’s rail and the distortions that it brings.

Bottom line, if I interpret the data correctly, is that a grade-level system will not be as accident prone as rail rapid transit (which is the category I think the Mufi system falls under).

In fact, Mufi’s train is twice (2x) as likely to result in fatalities as a grade-level system, according to the chart.

It’s not related to the comparison, but you probably know that perhaps the strongest group of actual rail opponents are those folks who would instead put a smelly, noisy, ugly highway up in the sky instead of the noisy, ugly train up in the sky (a pox on both their houses!, with apologies to Shakespeare). The same chart shows that highway fatalities are 3.86x, or almost four times (4x) higher than light rail.

Those numbers are all given in the chart on Ian’s website as per 100 million transit passengers or vehicle occupants.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/20/2010 12:28:00 PM   8 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Two snips from Democracy Now. First, from today’s headlines, an idea of the depth of the need:

Group: 20,000 Dying Daily from Lack of Surgery

Aid efforts have yet to approach meeting the dire humanitarian needs. In a statement, the medical relief group Partners in Health said some 20,000 people are dying each day who could be saved by surgery. The World Food Program says it’s handed out more than 250,000 ready-to-eat food rations amidst estimates some three million people are in need. The agency says it needs to hand out 100 million food rations in the next month, but is on pace to only have 16 million available. Earthquake survivors continue to receive medical care in makeshift clinics around Haiti. In a video, Doctors Without Borders anesthetist Deane Marchbein described the magnitude of the amputations being performed.

Deane Marchbein: “I imagine that not since the Crimean War have surgeons seen and amputated so many limbs. Perhaps the Civil War in the United States. But we’re talking about a situation that I’ve certainly never seen in my experience.” [Democracy Now, 1/20/2010]

And then a segment from yesterday’s program (website has video, transcript) on the militarization and so-called “security” problem (snippet):

DR. EVAN LYON: … One thing that I think is really important for people to understand is that misinformation and rumors and, I think at the bottom of the issue, racism has slowed the recovery efforts of this hospital. Security issues over the last forty-eight hours have been our—quote “security issues” over the last forty-eight hours have been our leading concern. And there are no security issues. I’ve been with my Haitian colleagues. I’m staying at a friend’s house in Port-au-Prince. We’re working for the Ministry of Public Health for the direction of this hospital as volunteers. But I’m living and moving with friends. We’ve been circulating throughout the city until 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning every night, evacuating patients, moving materials. There’s no UN guards. There’s no US military presence. There’s no Haitian police presence. And there’s also no violence. There is no insecurity.

JUAN GONZALEZ: That was Dr. Evan Lyon of Partners in Health talking about the situation at the General Hospital in Haiti. [Democracy Now, 1/19/2010]

It would be very strange if some stores or warehouses were not broken into. Suppose you and your family were starving, about to die, and you’re outside a grocery store with food inside. Of course, it happens and has or will happens in Haiti. The US press would rather have you believe that shooting the “looters” is the right thing to do.

What US military could do that would be helpful would be to bust down the door and distribute the food inside.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/20/2010 10:20:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The stock market rebounded Tuesday as traders placed bets that the outcome of an election in Massachusetts would make it harder for President Barack Obama to make changes to healthcare.

Healthcare stocks led the market higher as the prospect of a logjam in Washington eased concerns that profits at companies like insurers and drugmakers would suffer. [AP?, Market moves up on Massachusetts election polls, 1/19/2010]

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 05:50:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The soldiers are standing around because they have nothing to distribute, and there’s no one they can shoot, violence is apparently minimal and not the problem the US press is beating the drums about.

Multiple reports of helicopters landing, then taking off and throwing food out the doors. Inhuman treatment. Not in your newspaper? Well, the rest of the world is reading about it. Shame.

Why not send rescuers instead of military? Oh, and while Hillary Clinton was grabbing her photo op at the airport, it seems that aid flights were turned away by the US military air controllers.

The United Nations troops reportedly looked after rescuing staff from their own collapsed building and then did nothing else. Here’s a related tweet: “Ppl in Leogane need food desperately.UN won't come until 'security is confirmed' What they refer to I have no idea http://twitpic.com/yog2d”.

Reported by Amy Goodman in today’s Democracy Now, from Haiti:

As we passed through the epicenter, a young man hailed down our car, and he said, “Please, we see some helicopters overhead, but they don’t stop here. We have no aid. We have no food.”

Another report mentioned that there is a clear area in the center of town that could be used as a heliport to bring food and water—but it’s not.

Old folks dying one after another simply for lack of food and water.

Resources:

Democracy Now
Flashpoints
Amy Goodman’s tweets from Haiti
Sharif Kouddous’ tweets from Haiti (includes some Twitpics, a few quite graphic)

This is turning rapidly into Obama’s Katrina.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 05:29:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Ah, maybe our governor is indeed looking for a job in Washington, where telling the truth isn’t much of a value.

I was going to write about her statements about the Superferry quoted at the end of an Advertiser breaking news story yesterday. Brad Parsons beat me to it. Good job, too. Just click the link and check it out.

On Brad’s first point, it might be argued that Lingle is talking about money that went to the ferry company. Fixing the barge was a state expense, but they didn’t get the money, and the same for the other expenses, no matter how large or small. They benefitted the ferry company but did not go to them. Still, I think Brad has revealed the problem with the governor’s position.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 01:31:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I don’t know if this came up during yesterday’s session at the State Capitol or not. But I just got a new bit of input (thanks to ever-vigilant advocate George Fox): Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood…

…proposed that new funding guidelines for major transit projects be based on livability issues such as economic development opportunities and environmental benefits, in addition to cost and time saved, which are currently the primary criteria. [DailyKos, Some great news slipped under the radar last week, 1/19/2010]

I don’t know quite what to make of it. Mufi and his propagandists have been emphasizing how much time their heavy rail proposal would shave off commuting time for the people lucky enough to be able to use it. So now, that’s not the primary criterion?

There’s much more in the article, please check it out. In particular,

"Our new policy for selecting major transit projects will work to promote livability rather than hinder it," said Secretary LaHood.  "We want to base our decisions on how much transit helps the environment, how much it improves development opportunities and how it makes our communities better places to live."

We never had a chance to plan our own community, and the Honolulu government, both City Council and the Mayor, have resisted making our city bike-friendly and livable. This has been my beef here for some time. If we could have been involved in a structured planning process, as has happened elsewhere (demonstrating it can be done), perhaps we’d be more together as a community about what kind of transportation system(s) we want.

So if the feds want to fund those kinds of projects, Mufi’s rail isn’t it. But the article is hard for me to interpret. And it may just be verbiage to justify passing out lots of money to transportation projects. If it comes out of Washington, there’s not much reason to give it much credibility anyway (IMHO).

Another thing I am not sure came up or not yesterday is the loss of opportunity, including possible damage to neighborhoods, if noisy, unattractive and inaccessibly trains pass overhead. Where there is a station, big development will put in stores like Starbucks and Macys, but Mom and Pop won’t have a chance, I suspect. Mufi and his supporters expect big buck development. Much of that money (labor, profits, retail profits) will go out-of-state. But in between stations, any business located underneath the roar of the tracks risks losing customers—location, location, location they say, and underneath the tracks is the wrong location.

Portland has demonstrated not only that light rail can revitalize a city economy, but that it can be installed quickly and cheaply. Along the route, stores spring up, property values increase, and commuters and retailers alike benefit.

I think I’ll just repeat an earlier post (October, 2009). There’s a video snippet in it which I think is still very applicable.

A couple of days ago I promised (Grade-level transit much better for business) a video clip illustrating a fundamental shortcoming of Honolulu’s planned elevated mass transit system. In addition to the vastly increased cost over grade-level transit, the benefits to small businesses are completely missed. Sure, the big developers will profit with massive high-rent installations at the stations.

Here is a short clip from e2 Transport Portland: A Sense of Place. You can google that title for more information on the PBS series and on this video in particular.

Instead of a vibrant retail corridor, Honolulu will have blocked view planes, and under the tracks will be shadow, noise—and lost opportunity.

Certainly, train riders will have no idea what’s below them. They’ll get ads for the big station shops in their daily newspapers, but the little folks below the tracks have no chance.

e2 (e-squared) also produced podcasts to accompany their videos. Here is the one for the Portland video. You may want to download it and play it from your computer. It features my favorite architect, Peter Calthorpe. You’ll see that he (and the Portland city planners) favored designing the urban environment, not just installing expensive transit over what they had. Too bad Honolulu doesn’t have even that basic foresight.

We’ll get what developers and Mufi want for us, while the city will miss out on the numerous benefits that Portland chose for its citizens and entrepreneurs.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 12:30:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

New York State expects a $7.4 billion deficit this year, and like other states, is searching for ways to balance its budget.

But New York is trying to preserve its values as it deals with its budget crisis (unlike Hawaii).

[Governor] Paterson’s plan would cut school aid by 5 percent in a state with the highest per capita spending on education. It would also slow the growth of spending on Medicaid, reduce $1 billion from spending on state agencies and eliminate $300 million in undesignated annual aid to New York City.

But New York is avoiding harsher medicine. Mr. Paterson has made no significant cuts to the state’s workforce and even made assurances to union leaders that he would not seek layoffs this year, a risky move as the state faces huge deficits in the coming years. [New York Times, Paterson Budget Seeks $1 Billion More in Taxes and Fees, 1/19/2010]

Paterson includes a soda tax in his proposal:

He proposed raising $1.1 billion by hiking taxes and fees, including a $465 million excise tax on the syrup that sweetens soft drinks, a $1-per-pack cigarette tax that would raise $210 million and a $216 million levy on healthcare providers.

Justifying the soda and cigarette tax hikes, Paterson said the state spends $16 billion a year on healthcare for smokers and people with obesity-tied diseases, such as diabetes. [Reuters, Governor Paterson seeks $136 billion budget, non-diet soda tax, 1/19/2010]

Admittedly, some of the other measures NY will take would not be palatable here, but let’s look for a moment at the soda tax.

Using the Revenue Calculator for Soft Drink Taxes at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity website, for New York State, $465 million would correspond roughly to a tax of .425 cents per ounce of sugary beverages. Taxing at that rate would bring in $32 million for Hawaii because of our lower population (tourist guzzling would bring in more).

Hawaii could get $91 million with a two-cent tax per ounce of sugar beverages, or by including both sugar and diet beverages, we could realize $169 million.

Of course, Hawaii could also expect what New York hopes for, which is a reduction in obesity-tied diseases.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 11:07:00 AM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

You can tune in to the Proposition 8 trial via Twitter. @ddayen is live-blogging it right now.

Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

A recent tweet noted a witness’s testimony:

$490 mil in spending over 3 years from same-sex marriage, and $40 mil in tax revenue for state and local govt

That’s for California, remember, the nation’s most populous state.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/19/2010 10:15:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

This is a new wrinkle. As the death toll in Afghanistan and Pakistan mounts, one can find claims that 67% of the dead can be attributed to Taliban attacks and the rest to US/NATO.

But now this: Blackwater/XE behind terrorist bombings in Asia and Africa?:

WMR [Wayne Madsen Report]’s intelligence sources in Asia and Europe are reporting that the CIA contractor firm XE Services, formerly Blackwater, has been carrying out “false flag” terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sinkiang region of China, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq, in some cases with the assistance of Israeli Mossad and Indian Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) personnel.
…
A number of terrorist bombings in Pakistan have been blamed by Pakistani Islamic leaders on Blackwater, Mossad, and RAW. Blackwater has been accused of hiring young Pakistanis in Peshawar to carry out false flag bombings that are later blamed on the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan. One such bombing took place during the Ashura procession in Karachi last month.

This article is one of the most scary I have read in some time. Without further comment here, I recommend that you click over and read the full extent of the claims in this story. Ok, one more snip to give you an idea of what’s there:

Blackwater/XE is also thought to be carrying out terrorist roadside bombings in Algeria, once the exclusive domain of the mercenary French Foreign Legion, to justify a greater American security presence in Algeria, ostensibly to protect natural gas pipelines in the country.

(Thanks to Viviane Lerner for pointer to this story)

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/18/2010 11:27:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

More confirmation of US military diverting badly needed aid to Haiti. This time, from the New York Times:

The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.

“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.

He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
…
The group had originally planned to touch down in Haiti, but the delays at the airport forced them to divert to Santo Domingo, delaying their arrival in Haiti by about 12 hours, said Paul Conneally, a Red Cross spokesman who was traveling with the convoy.

“Every minute counts, I know that, but we cannot be on standby to land at Port-au-Prince because it may not be for two or three days,” he said. “It’s problematic to go across roads, but it’s a small price to pay.”

And from the Guardian (UK):

The US military's takeover of emergency operations in Haiti has triggered a diplomatic row with countries and aid agencies furious at having flights redirected.

Brazil and France lodged an official protest with Washington after US military aircraft were given priority at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, forcing many non-US flights to divert to the Dominican Republic.

Brasilia warned it would not relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe", exposing a brewing power struggle amid the global relief effort. The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières also complained about diverted flights.
…
The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières complained about flights with medical staff and equipment which were redirected to the Dominican Republic. "We are all going crazy," said Nan Buzard, of the American Red Cross.

It has also been hinted by some blogs that the US military is there, in part, to make sure that president Jean-Bertrand Aristide is not allowed to return to his country.

The world takes note

Google reveals several international articles condemning the US reaction. Here is a particularly scathing criticism from the Australian Broadcasting System. Snipping this article does not do it justice, please click and read the original:

Cuba, a socialist state, is well-prepared for natural disaster and few die there in the hurricane season, and rebuilding happens quickly. The United States, a capitalist nation, was ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina though experts had warned for years of broken dykes, inundation, chaos, disease and looting, and its response was an international joke.

China, a socialist state, handles earthquakes well. Australia, a social democratic state, handles floods and bushfires fairly well. Yet on the US's back doorstep a million people may die soon, thirsting to death under piles of bricks or in those rapidly-spreading diseases that follow earthquake, unhelped by America whose borrowed billions were that day bombing Kandahar not funding ambulance teams in Port-au-Prince.
…
While you've been reading this three Haitians have died under heaped-up stone unrescued and an AIG executive has earned two hundred dollars for helping wreck the world economy, and he'll earn three thousand more in the next hour while twenty more Haitians die.
…
Helicopter-gunships have been illegally over-flying Pakistani villages while you've been reading this, and they could have been rescuing buried children in Port au Prince.

(Thanks to the Progressive Review for pointer to one of these articles)

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/18/2010 09:35:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“…hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers.”

France accused the US of "occupying" Haiti on Monday as thousands of American troops flooded into the country to take charge of aid efforts and security.
…
The French minister in charge of humanitarian relief called on the UN to "clarify" the American role amid claims the military build up was hampering aid efforts.

Alain Joyandet admitted he had been involved in a scuffle with a US commander in the airport's control tower over the flight plan for a French evacuation flight.

"This is about helping Haiti, not about occupying Haiti," Mr Joyandet said.

Geneva-based charity Medecins Sans Frontieres backed his calls saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers.

But US commanders insisted their forces' focus was on humanitarian work and last night agreed to prioritise aid arrivals to the airport over military flights, after the intervention of the UN. [Telegraph, UK, US accused of 'occupying' Haiti as troops flood in, 1/18/2010]

What Haiti needs is relief, not troops. As the article points out, there is great sensitivity around the presence of US troops since Haiti was occupied by the US between 1915 and 1935. UN “peacekeeping” forces currently stationed in Haiti have been accused of rape, child abuse and molestation, and murder. Enough of troops already.

FEMA is in charge of disaster relief, right? Not the US Southern Command. And according to reporter Greg Palast, FEMA is sitting on supplies that should go to Haiti:

From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day. [gregpalast.com, The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust, 1/17/2010]

Naomi Klein warns that Disaster Capitalism will want to take advantage of the tragedy for profit. Having the US military on the ground and in control of the country prepares the way for that to occur. See: Naomi Klein Issues Haiti Disaster Capitalism Alert: Stop Them Before They Shock Again (Democracy Now, 1/14/2010). She quotes from a Heritage Foundation document posted on the web and then removed and revised:

"In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region."

The final piece of this picture is of course that the US was responsible for kidnapping and removing Haiti’s democratically elected president (speaking of “re-shaping Haiti’s government!). For background on Aristide and what he accomplished, as well as the US role in warping Haiti’s economy for its own profit, check out the interview on Danny Schechter’s Progressive radio program here (1/14/2010).

Just as an example, from Schechter’s interview, under Aristide the illiteracy rate was cut in half, from about 90% to about 45%. Literate, educated people are less likely to be willing to work in the sweatshops that Reagan and Clinton encouraged to make use of displaced farm labor that flocked to the cities. What happened to the farms? Haitian agriculture was destroyed by forcing the country to import cheap American rice. Perhaps this explains the “dysfunctional government” the Heritage Foundation referred to.

Put it all together and it should be obvious that sending troops to Haiti is not what they need.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/18/2010 06:26:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Something doesn’t smell right at the Hawaii Department of Education. It doesn’t take a conspiracy theory to wonder about the sudden resignation of schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto, the anointment of short-term DOE employee and attorney Kathryn Matayoshi as the incoming sup, and the secrecy at the Board of Education about the deal.  The BOE knew something, though we don’t know what or how much, because they declined to tell the public what was happening. So we found out the day before Hamamoto’s resignation became effective that leadership was being shifted to a relative newcomer.

Something is not right here, even if we don’t know what it is. It’s like opening the refrigerator door and the nose tells you that something has gone bad even if you don’t see it right away.

Or, stealing from Hamlet:

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark Hawaii.

I can’t put it better than this email circulated by a parent who suggests that usually it’s best if the person in charge is qualified and has come up through the ranks. Can we say either is true of Kathryn Matayoshi?

I have an advanced degree in a scientific field and tutor math privately. Many of my students ask why I can't be their regular math teacher at school.

The answer, of course, is that I have not taken any education courses. Therefore, I am not “qualified” to teach high school, even though I've taught in college and would be able to do so again.

This situation became even more dire under NCLB, where I watched several highly effective Educational Assistants (paraprofessionals) lose their positions because they didn't have college degrees in child development or early childhood education.

Therefore, it stinks to high heaven that not having an educational background is suddenly totally irrelevant for the top position at DOE.

Based on what teachers have told me, having ed courses is highly over-rated, but student teaching is very valuable.

Seventy-five years ago, it was the norm that CEOs had come up through the ranks of a company. It was thought that to run a company you had to understand the product and its uses. Nowadays, there's a school of thought that says if you've learned “management,” you can run any company knowing squat about how anything is made, used or marketed. However, I've noticed that these days the companies that are highly successful in the US are still being run by their founders - guys who know the product inside and out. After they retire or the company gets so big they're pushed out by management types, the business declines.

So I can't see DOE getting much better under Ms. Matayoshi. More legal perhaps, but not any better in student outcomes.

Is she going to make a dent in the illegalities discovered by the state auditor? I can't see it happening. There's way too much at stake  for the beneficiaries of the graft. They haven't gotten away with it this long because there's people in government with a strong interest in honest government, have they?

To quote Frank de Lima, “For to get my kicks, I went into island politics. I got elected, I did my time, I wasn't indicted for one major crime. For the minor ones, they made me an honorable Bishop Estate Trustee”.

We've seen how entrenched this is already - people brought in under the Felix Consent Decree either got discouraged after a year or two and went to places where they didn't have to check their ethics at the door when they went to work, or they got co-opted with amazing speed, like past superintendent Paul LeMahieu.

Given this surprise, and the lack of answers to reasonable questions, isn’t it likely that there are a couple more surprises waiting to be discovered?

And what about the students: can someone without an educational background or experience in the DOE lead this massive bureaucracy to improvement?

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/18/2010 05:46:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

As the US military Southern Command moves into position to occupy Haiti, let us not forget Hawaii’s own very much disappeared history (check your local paper!).

Today is the day in history that the lawful government of Hawaii was forcibly removed in a coup d'état by a group of businessmen and sugar planters with the direct assistance of the US military. Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate.

I Liliuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. "That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed a Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government." Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.
— Queen Liliuokalani, Jan 17, 1893

I’ll quote from the Wikipedia, although it may not be the best resource, and from other sources.

…The Hawaiian monarchy ended in a day of bloodless revolution. Armed insurrection by a relatively small group of men, most of them American by birth or heritage, succeeded in wresting control of the Islands with the backing of American troops sent ashore from a warship in Honolulu Harbor. To this "superior force of the United States of America," Queen Lili`uokalani yielded her throne, under protest, in order to avoid bloodshed, trusting that the United States government would right the wrong that had been done to her and the Hawaiian people. [hawaiination.org, “Spirit of Aloha,”, 5/1994]

On 14 January 1893, a group composed of Americans and Europeans formed a Committee of Safety seeking to overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom, depose the Queen, and seek annexation to the United States. As the coup d'état was unfolding on 17 January the Committee of Safety expressed concern for the safety and property of American citizens. In response, United States Government Minister John L. Stevens summoned a company of U.S. Marines from the USS Boston and two companies of U.S. Navy sailors to take up positions at the U.S. Legation, Consulate, and Arion Hall. On the afternoon of 16 January 1893, 162 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Boston in Honolulu Harbor came ashore under orders of neutrality. Historian William Russ has noted that the presence of these troops, ostensibly to enforce neutrality and prevent violence, effectively made it impossible for the monarchy to protect itself.

The Queen was deposed on 17 January 1893 and temporarily relinquished her throne to "the superior military forces of the United States".She had hoped the United States, like Great Britain earlier in Hawaiian history, would restore Hawaii's sovereignty to the rightful holder.

Queen Liliuokalani issued the following statement yielding her authority to the United States Government rather than to the Provisional Government:

I Liliuokalani, by the Grace of God and under the Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen, do hereby solemnly protest against any and all acts done against myself and the Constitutional Government of the Hawaiian Kingdom by certain persons claiming to have established a Provisional Government of and for this Kingdom. "That I yield to the superior force of the United States of America whose Minister Plenipotentiary, His Excellency John L. Stevens, has caused United States troops to be landed a Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government." Now to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life, I do this under protest and impelled by said force yield my authority until such time as the Government of the United States shall, upon facts being presented to it, undo the action of its representatives and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the Constitutional Sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

—Queen Liliuokalani, Jan 17, 1893 [Wikipedia, Liliuokalani]

US troops from the USS Boston invade Hawaii (state archive photo). Probably the ship and the landing of troops could be seen by the Queen from the upstairs windows of the Iolani Palace, since the harbor was closer than it is today.

More photos and description at Overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/17/2010 02:04:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

In Hawaii we talk about alternative energy, but other places are moving on it. Check this out, for example:

Australians Will Be Able to Earn $10,000 a Year Supplying Grid From Rooftop Solar

The New South Wales government has just introduced a Solar Bonus Scheme that could have residents earning as much as $10,000 a year to send clean electricity to the grid from solar panels on their own roofs. The incentive is a Feed-in Tariff like the one that was so popular in Germany that they ran out of solar panels last year, and that shook up the global solar market when Spain introduced theirs a few years ago, because they paid enough so that average homeowners could earn money…

Check these earlier articles on feed-in tariffs.

Heck, we’ve got the sunshine, but we’ve also got HECO, a company that so far makes its money burning fossil fuels, in possession of the power grid.

What will it take so that you could turn your rooftop into a personal revenue source? Will Hawaii’s current plans permit you to change the sunshine on your roof into $10,000 in your pocket? Figure it out and then let’s get busy.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/17/2010 01:33:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

“From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there.” —Greg Palast

If you subscribe to the Advertiser, check out their front-page story yesterday (Saturday) on relief efforts in Haiti. It completely, totally, erases any news of relief efforts by countries other than the USA. It doesn’t mention how inadequate the US response has been. It also doesn’t go near the responsibility that the US bears for the death toll.

The story originated at the Lost Angeles Times, but of course was selected by editors from among many possible choices. The Advertiser is in good company, a New York Times story the same day also erased any foreign participation in rescue and relief efforts.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that the US lagged behind other countries in getting to Haiti. Giving the American public the impression that Haiti is being saved by the US (and the US military in particular) is another great journalistic failing in the making. No wonder newspapers are in trouble.

Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, "The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days." "In a few days," Mr. Obama? [gregpalast.com, The Right Testicle of Hell: History of a Haitian Holocaust, 1/17/2010]

(Image is a Google map posted on Greg Palast’s website)

More, snipped from Greg Palast:

3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, "My sister, she's under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?" Should I tell her, "Obama will have Marines there in 'a few days'"?

4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5.
Obama's Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "I don't know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has." We know Gates doesn't know.

6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It's all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people." Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.

7.
Send in the Marines. That's America's response. That's what we're good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.

8.
But don't worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They're from Iceland.

I think you can see why the Advertiser/LA Times/NY Times coverage is a gross distortion of what is happening and of the US failure to provide critically needed aid.

As to the responsibility for the death toll, no, the US did not cause the earthquake. But it is responsible for the shantytowns piled on the hills that collapsed and killed multitudes of people.

Let’s go back to a Democracy Now interview from April, 2008:

An official from the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Rolf Traeger, faulted the Structural Adjustment Programs prescribed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for gutting agricultural production in the developing world.

AMY GOODMAN: Nowhere is this perhaps more clear than in the case of Haiti. Thirty years ago, Haiti had all the rice it needed. Then in 1986, Haiti turned to the IMF for a loan. Now, after cutting tariff protections on local rice, Haiti imports most of its rice from the United States, which in turn remains heavily subsidized. US rice farmers get one billion dollars a year in government subsidies. Meanwhile in Haiti, hungry people are rioting in the streets because they cannot afford to buy rice. [Democracy Now, The US Role in Haiti’s Food Riots, 4/24/2008]

So the farms were destroyed, and people piled up in the slums that were obliterated by the earthquake.

And now Obama sends in Bush (who destroyed Haitian democracy by abducting the elected president Aristide and removing him to Africa) and Clinton (who is responsible for not only the trade policy but for promoting sweatshops, really slave labor, for US benefit) as a team to rescue Haiti.  More on this:

Of course, President Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004, when he and American forces abducted President Aristide and his wife, taking them off to Africa, and they are now in South Africa. President Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops. Haitians in Haiti today make 38 cents an hour. They don’t make a high enough wage to pay for their lunch and transportation to and from work. But this is the kind of economic program that President Clinton has supported. I think that is sad, that these two should be joined in this kind of effort. It sends, I think, the wrong kind of signal. But that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives. [Democracy Now, “Bush Was Responsible for Destroying Haitian Democracy”–Randall Robinson on Obama Tapping Bush to Co-Chair US Relief Efforts, 1/15/2010]

Please check out Greg Palast’s article, which also appears on Huffington Post and other websites.

Oh yes, Hillary Clinton showed up in Port-au-Prince:

Though the visit is mainly intended as a show of American support for Haiti, Mrs. Clinton said there were a few tangible benefits. In addition to bringing in supplies, her C-130 plane evacuated 50 Haitian Americans who were stranded here — including a baby who was sleeping soundly in a crib before takeoff despite the roar of the aircraft engines.

She was also able to deliver some goods to American diplomats. The night before her flight, Mrs. Clinton’s senior staff members prowled the aisles of supermarkets and drug stores buying bulk supplies of toothpaste, mustard, even cigarettes. [New York Times, In Show of Support, Clinton Goes to Haiti, 1/17/2010]

Good for the American baby. Good for those American diplomats who now have toothpaste, mustard and cigarettes (!). Shame on Hillary Clinton. Shame, unfortunately, on America.

What’s next for Haiti? A de facto military takeover looks likely.

Follow events on the web. For news on the Haiti disaster, our commercial press is worse than useless it seems.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/17/2010 12:12:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The battle over the use and removal of depleted uranium has been largely fought on the Big Island. That’s not to say all of it is there, but just that they have been quite active and I think the issue might be better known there than on Oahu. We need to pay more attention to it here.

This weekend the trades have returned and the Vog has finally lifted. But don’t forget it. If depleted uranium dust is stirred up on the Big Island, or during live munitions training there or on Oahu at Makua, at Schofield Barracks, or elsewhere, it will blow into your windows just like the Vog did. Vog makes you cough, DU in the air makes you die.

The state ought to consider the presence of depleted uranium as a major public health threat instead of leaving it only to advocates to protect us. When the rats were discovered in Chinatown, the state was forced to act, however feebly. DU is far worse, if you breathe or eat it, you’re doomed. So could your children and unborn children be affected. Unlike rats, the solution to the problem is not simple, nor is it contained within the walls of a market building.

When Vog returns to Oahu next time, imagine that it is harmful. It can’t be escaped. If we don’t treat the DU threat seriously, the problem could blow into all of our windows and under our doors.

Please see the comments attached to my earlier article. I’d like to snip from one of them, referring to last week’s testimony:

…Waianae has about a 1,000 young women that will have a child within the next five years. Should the army resume bombing in Makua we should see a high rate of birth defects. I am already experiencing the Squid Sucking babies in Waianae and the early deaths of young adults and mid 40s.

I did not do as good a job that I wanted to do, but we only had a few minutes. Kilauea eruptions fan's across Hawaii's achipelago and that's as visible as I could get.

I am not for License to posses DU, nor am I for permit to cleanup. In additions to, I am not for the NRC to use an enforcment on the idea of removing the contaminates.

Here is someone taking a strong stand, and paying his own way to go to Hilo to give the allowed four minutes of testimony.

Shouldn’t we all take this problem more seriously?

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/17/2010 11:20:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Thanks to Danny Schechter, the News Dissector, for emailing these and other links to me:

Another group of 60 member of the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade against Disasters and Serious Epidemics has started assisting victims of the quake that hit Haiti last Tuesday.

The team, with experience in China, Pakistan, Guatemala, Indonesia and Bolivia, joined the 344 Cuban health collaborators who were already working in that Caribbean nation before the devastating 7.3-degree earthquake.

As part of the solidarity support to one of the poorest countries of the world, now strongly hit by nature, the Havana government has sent medicines, serum and plasma bags, foods and other provisions.

Cuban physicians have assisted some 2,000 patients and carry out 111 major surgeries and 60 minor surgeries in an improvised field hospital, several mass media reported. [Prensa Latina, More Cuban Docs in Haiti after Tremor, 1/15/2010]

Venezuela is also in Haiti (snippet):

The Venezuelan government will send a second contingent of specialists and 12 tons of humanitarian aid to Haiti Friday, to support the Caribbean country recently pounded by a quake. According to the director for Civil Protection and Disaster Handling, Luis Diaz, the new team is made up of members of the Simon Bolivar International Brigade, an entity trained to deal with such tragedies as the one in Haiti.

The new contingent will join another formed by nearly 50 collaborators including doctors, firemen, and damage assessors already in Port au Prince, Diaz told Venezolana de Television. [Prensa Latina, Venezuela Sends More Aid to Haiti, 1/15/2010]

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/15/2010 11:39:00 AM   3 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The Army on Nov. 6, 2008, applied before the NRC for a license to possess and manage depleted uranium at nine -military installations, including Pohakuloa and Oahu's Schofield Barracks.

Jim Albertini, Cory Harden, Isaac Harp and Luwella Leonardi are opposing the license. They contend that the weak radioactive material left over after enriched uranium is removed is toxic and harmful to humans when vaporized and inhaled. [Hawaii Tribune-Herald, Testimony heard on DU request, 1/14/2010)]

Although the videoconference hearing did not seem to go the way Big Island and Oahu advocates may have hoped, according to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald report, it did set down some scary facts.

The hearing was in Maryland with videoconference link to UH Hilo. The complete story is in the article, but I found this portion particularly of concern:

The judges also asked tough questions of Lt. Col. Kent Herring of the Army Environmental Litigation Division. Herring said the 714 rounds [shipped to Hawaii] represented 299 pounds of depleted uranium, assuming 6.7 ounces per round.

Judge Anthony J. Baratta, who holds a doctorate in nuclear physics, told Herring that the 714 rounds "is probably the minimum amount you can substantiate" and said the upper limit was likely 2,120 rounds.

So there is someplace between 299 and 888 pounds of depleted uranium on the Big Island, lying loose in the environment.

That stuff needs to be taken away.

Snipped from the Wikipedia:

Multiple studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. A 2005 epidemiology review concluded: "In aggregate the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU." The World Health Organization states that no consistent risk of reproductive, developmental, or carcinogenic effects have been reported in humans. However, the objectivity of this report has been called into question.

More (you can read the entire article for a complete rundown):

Normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems can be affected by uranium exposure, because in addition to being weakly radioactive, uranium is a toxic metal. The chemical toxicity of depleted uranium is about a million times greater in vivo than its radiological hazard. Health effects of DU are determined by factors such as the extent of exposure and whether it was internal or external. Three main pathways exist by which internalization of uranium may occur: inhalation, ingestion, and embedded fragments or shrapnel contamination. Properties such as phase (e.g. particulate or gaseous), oxidation state (e.g. metallic or ceramic), and the solubility of uranium and its compounds influence their absorption, distribution, translocation, elimination and the resulting toxicity. For example, metallic uranium is relatively non-toxic compared to hexavalent uranium(VI) uranyl compounds such as uranium trioxide.

The Wikipedia article also described studies that claimed to show no toxic effects. I say “claimed to show” because the studies were conducted by defense-connected agencies. Do I trust them? Not for a minute. Again, it is best to refer to the complete article.

In any case, why should anyone in Hawaii want to tolerate the dispersal of 299 or 888 pounds of DU in the environment? Let’s see what decision is handed down next month.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/15/2010 11:14:00 AM   3 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

From this morning’s Democracy Now, an interview with TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson:

“Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy…Clinton has largely sponsored a program of economic development that supports the idea of sweatshops… but that is not what we should focus on now. We should focus on saving lives.”

There’s no transcript posted for this segment yet (maybe later today), but here’s what I heard:

George W. Bush was responsible for destroying Haitian democracy in 2004 when US troops kidnapped president Aristide and took him out of his country.

Clinton helped destroy agriculture in Haiti. Haiti was not only self-sufficient, but exported rice until trade rules prohibited protective tariffs, flooding the country with cheap US rice. Farmers left the countryside and lived in poverty in the piled-up shacks that collapsed during the earthquake. So while the US was not responsible for the earthquake, it is complicit in causing the high death toll (this is my paraphrase of Robinson’s remarks).

Clinton’s solution for Haiti before the earthquake was sweatshops which paid such a low wage, according the program, that slaves workers could not afford their own transportation to work or lunch.

When the transcript is available, it will relate Robinson’s remarks more accurately.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/15/2010 10:16:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

No mention of China’s relief effort in today’s Advertiser story, Relief trickle in. But the omission seems to be widespread in US reporting. You have to go to AFP and other foreign sources to learn even a little.

AFP (Agence France-Presse) reported yesterday:

A planeload of Chinese soldiers led the start of a flow of aid into the Caribbean nation of Haiti early Thursday, two days after it was devastated by a powerful earthquake.

Chinese military unloaded 20 tonnes of relief supplies from an Air China flight under the watch of UN Chinese soldiers.

Some 50 Chinese rescue personnel and three sniffer dogs left in minibuses emblazoned with the UN logo, heading into scenes of devastation and despair.

Googling through the news stories, I find lines like this from the WSJ:

As military and rescue teams began to stream in Thursday from the U.S. and other countries,…

Actually, China was on the ground late Wednesday, but you would not find that from AP or US reports. No, I haven’t checked all of them. And just try to find reference to Cuba’s medical mission in US reports.

Here is a snip from a Thursday report from the BBC:

A few US aid planes and a 50-strong Chinese rescue team with sniffer dogs have landed at the airport serving the capital, Port-au-Prince.

Cuba already had more than 300 doctors in Haiti before the earthquake and they have been treating the injured in field hospitals.

Other plane-loads of rescuers and relief supplies are on the way from the EU, Canada, Russia and Latin American nations.

A British rescue team with heavy lifting gear and dogs has now arrived in Haiti.

From the New Zealand Herald:

China sent a chartered plane carrying 10 tonnes of tents, food, medical equipment and sniffer dogs, with a 60-member earthquake relief team who worked in China's own 2008 earthquake, which killed 90,000 people.

CNN mentioned China in an early Wednesday article, before aid had arrived.

Ah, there is detailed coverage of China’s rapid response to the tragedy:

China's rescue team in Haiti had established the first movable medical point by 9:00 a.m. local time on Thursday and provided medical aid to 110 injured Haitians, according to sources with the country's General Hospital of Armed Police Forces.

… but that’s from Xinhua.

One AP story included a picture on the web page of the Chinese rescue team getting ready to depart Beijing, but nothing in the story itself.

This may relate to why print journalism is declining in this country. You’re better off reading AFP (seldom used by US papers which don’t want to pay the fee for their wire service) and foreign reports. Fortunately, we have the Internet, Google News, or your favorite European newspaper online.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/15/2010 08:01:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

What a crock.

Angry Obama vows to tax cash-rich Wall Street (Guardian, UK, 1/14/2010).

So he taxes bonuses. That’s not what we need to create jobs and stop foreclosures. Dear Mr. President: there are people in this country whose only income is food stamps, their survival is uncertain, and all you can do is tax Wall Street bonuses?

What have you done for us lately?

Will you give any of that money taxed from the fat cats to people in need, people who are losing their homes?

How could you splash around in the surf in Hawaii and take your kids for shave ice and all that while Hawaii has the 10th highest foreclosure rate in the nation? How about giving back a little? You were born here, right?

Next. There was an article in this morning’s Advertiser about new restrictions on credit cards that will come into effect in February. I noticed that they were no more punitive than a whipping with a wet noodle. Bad banks! Now you will have to give clear information!

Congress created only a sham of regulation. They did not roll back usurious interest rates. Banks beat the deadline to raise interest and fees before the regs came into effect. Remember also that right now they borrow money at close to zero interest from the Fed.

In other words, we lose again, the big Wall Street banks win again.

It would be great if the daily newspapers noticed this, but don’t hold your breath for any hard-hitting articles. It would be even better if Obama really was our president, but that may be a lost hope also.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/14/2010 06:44:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Of course, the attention of the whole world is focused on the Haiti earthquake and providing relief in some way. I was impressed by how fast China moved. Googling around in Chinese, it seems they really did take note of the seismic data and scrambled immediately.

This text appeared on several blogs and news sites:

《新京报》发表评论说，中国对此反应速度如此之快，这恐怕得益于中国对地震的痛苦回忆。

"Beijing News" commented that China has responded so rapidly, this may be due to painful memories of China's earthquake.

无论是唐山、还是汶川大地震，都让我们知道了时间就是生命，也让我们知道了大规模的自然灾害会如此沉痛地伤害一个社会、触痛一个国家。

Whether Tangshan, or the Wenchuan earthquake, have let us know the time is life, let us also know that a large-scale natural disasters, is so deeply hurt a community, tenderness a country.

There is also a theory I found that since Haiti and China are polar opposites (is that true? I don’t have a globe…), an earthquake in one place may affect the other. In other words, some kind of seismic wave bouncing through or maybe around the planet to the opposite point. It is only a theory, not yet supported by data. So they are wondering if there will be some effect someplace in China from the Haiti earthquake.

I was also wondering at first about the video which I linked to in the earlier post. Why are they wearing helmets and so forth while getting ready to fly off on a rescue mission? But actually, when I lived in Japan, I noticed the Japanese did the same thing. I don’t know why, but at least it may not be strange that they did it. The scramble to get vehicles and equipment ready is also the same as in Japan, where they are pretty good at earthquake response. Everyone really does rush and run around. Indeed, time is life. Those first 72 hours are said to be crucial to save lives.

Not to be flip about this, but I think the Chinese response was faster than FEMA’s when Katrina hit. That’s neither here nor there, but California officials might want to get to know their Chinese counterparts just in case.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/14/2010 06:17:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

A quick Google this morning would seem to indicate that Cuba already had medical teams working in Haiti, and China mobilized a rescue flight as soon as the seismographs indicated the extent of the problem (at least according to this account, which includes a video: China sends rescue team to quake-hit Haiti, donates one million dollars.

Where is the USA? Military flights to survey the damage and two destroyers on the way.

This morning’s Democracy Now seemed to confirm this. The transcript isn’t posted yet, I’ll check back later.

I’m not sure yet that this is accurate, but the island is so close by, why so slow??

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/14/2010 08:30:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Voters stand to lose out if the Supreme Court treats political spending by businesses and other big-money players as protected speech.

Corporations are pitching a bizarre product -- a radical vision of the 1st Amendment. It would give corporations rather than voters a central role in our electoral process by treating corporate political spending as protected speech. If this vision becomes reality, businesses and other big-money players will spend billions either hyping their preferred candidates or running attack ads against elected officials who don't support their preferred agenda. Voters will be forced into a couch-potato role, mere viewers of the electoral spectacle bought and paid for by wealthy companies. [Los Angeles Times, Giving corporations an outsized voice in elections, 1/10/2010]

Reading this article prompts me to leak my President’s Letter from the soon-to-appear Kokua Council January Newsletter.

As the curtain rises on a new year and a new decade, America faces challenges that are more than economic. We the people, hoping for change in Washington, are learning that we’re still the audience rather than the playwrights. We may choose the actors, but we don’t write their lines or create the plot.

The current show is titled “Health Care Reform.” Its patrons are the wealthy health insurers and drug companies. It’s no surprise that they get to write a happy ending for themselves. We may applaud or we may boo, but the show will go on despite the many critical reviews.

Act I was the passage of the House version of the reform bill, which includes a public option. It had its dramatic moments–for example, the last-minute inclusion of an outrageously restrictive anti-abortion provision that reverses a generation of gains in women’s rights.

In Act II the scene shifted to the Senate, where the action was punctuated by arrests of audience members demanding that single-payer be put on the table. It never was, though a public option lurked behind the arras until stabbed by a knife-wielding Senator Lieberman.

Critics are left to squabble among themselves whether these bills should be passed because they are the best we can get, or should be defeated because they are far worse than what we have. If we were truly in control of our government, since the majority favor publicly-funded health care, we would have had it already. But politics is out of our hands. Our job as advocates in 2010, an election year, is to somehow reclaim our role and write the playbook ourselves.

Depending on what the Supreme Court decides, reclaiming our role in our own government may prove to be impossible.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/13/2010 06:26:00 PM   3 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The January 7, 2010 Town Square program on food safety is posted on the Hawaii Public Radio website and will remain there a couple of weeks and then disappear.

If for some strange reason you have not tired of this, right-click here to download your very own copy.

The host of Town Square is Beth-Ann Kozlovich. Guests on the program were Larry Lau from DOH, Keoki Kerr from KITV, and me.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/13/2010 05:21:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

YouTube channel with growing number of earthquake videos

Donating to help Haiti: Doctors without Borders (see pic on webpage)

The first reports are now emerging from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams who were already working on medical projects Haiti. They are treating hundreds of people injured in the quake and have been setting up clinics in tents to replace their own damaged medical facilities.

Donating to help Haiti: Oxfam America:

Oxfam has long experience in Haiti, and we're rushing in teams from around the region to respond to the situation where our assistance is most needed. Our response will include providing clean water, shelter, sanitation and helping people recover – your donation will go immediately to the most critical needs in Haiti, and we will ensure that every penny is used wisely.

Donating to help Haiti: Lambi Fund: webpage and FaceBook: (see FaceBook page for how you can donate via your cellphone and PayPal account)

Donating to help Haiti: Partners in Health:

In an urgent email from Port-au-Prince, Louise Ivers, our clinical director in Haiti, appealed for assistance from her colleagues in the Central Plateau: "Port-au-Prince is devastated, lot of deaths. SOS. SOS... Temporary field hospital by us at UNDP needs supplies, pain meds, bandages. Please help us."

Alltop Haiti page (twitter, news, etc., the usual Alltop overload/overkill but worth wading through)

Live blog of political cartoons related to tragedy on Daryl Cagle’s website

Toll-free number for info on relatives in Haiti is here

US to detain rather than deport Haitians (the inhuman condition in which ICE detainees is held is a whole other topic-see today’s Democracy Now for example)

Resources also useful for bloggers and journalists wanting to cover Haiti remotely:

Maps, news and newslinks from Ushahidi

NPR News tweets on the earthquake

Carel Pedre’s tweets — Pedre is a popular Haiti radio and TV host

Lisandro Suero is posting photos on Twitpic

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/13/2010 12:12:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Most genetically modified seed corn is produced in Hawaii, where a large majority of all the corn grown is raised expressly for the production of genetically modified seeds. [Pacific Business News, Genetically modified corn is on the rise, 9/7/2004]

Hawaii-grown corn, big business or not, may be bad business for the state. A recent study is getting to the point GMO opponents have long advocated—the study claims that the stuff is bad, at least for rats (no, this has nothing to do with the Chinatown rat problem, I know you were thinking about that…).

Here is a headline from today’s Democracy Now:

Study Links Monsanto GM Corn to Organ Failure

A new study claims to have uncovered new health effects caused by genetically modified corn from the agricultural giant Monsanto. The International Journal of Biological Sciences says GM corn helped cause organ damage in rats. The study’s author called Monsanto’s GM methods “a very serious mistake, dramatic for public health.” [Democracy Now headlines, 1/13/2010]

An article from the Huffington Post: Monsanto's GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals (1/12/2010)

More info and a discussion of Monsanto’s rebuttal: Three Approved GMOs Linked to Organ Damage (Food Freedom, 1/1/2010)

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/13/2010 12:01:00 PM   4 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Advertiser Editorial and Opinion Editor Jeanne Mariani-Belding will be leaving the paper this month. The paper ran the short story in their community section, under “Downtown.”

This reminds me of how they tried to hide bad Superferry news there by creating a new community, “Ka Iwi Channel.”

The story is probably on their web page someplace, but I couldn’t quickly find it and need to run off to a meeting.

Marianai-Belding’s departure is more than “downtown” news, so check it out if you can find it.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/12/2010 08:21:00 AM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I was going to write about how curious it is that school superintendent Pat Hamamoto submitted her resignation but it was kept secret by the Board of Education, then someone with essentially no experience is dropped into that job.

But David Shapiro has already done a better job than I could with it. So please click over to his article, Is the search for a schools chief already over?, (1/11/2010).

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 03:32:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Below is a snippet from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka’s address to the National Press Club today. There is lots more in this transcript from truthout.org that is worth reading, especially his comments on the future of the labor movement. Check out the complete article (link at the end).

Trumka is describing his trip to the West Coast.

Everywhere I went, people asked me, why do so many of the people we elect seem to care only about Wall Street? Why is helping banks a matter of urgency, but unemployment is something we just have to live with? Why don't we make anything in America anymore? And why is it so hard to pass a health care bill that guarantees Americans healthy lives instead of guaranteeing insurance companies healthy profits?

As I travelled from city to city, I heard a new sense of resignation from middle class Americans, people laid off for the first time in their lives asking, "What did I do wrong?"

I came away shaken by the sense that the very things that make America great are in danger.
…
At this moment, the voices of America's working women and men must be heard in Washington--not the voices of bankers and speculators for whom it always seems to be the best of times, but the voices of those for whom the New Year brings pink slips and givebacks, hollowed-out health care, foreclosures and pension freezes- the roll call of an economy that long ago stopped working for most of us. [truthout.org, AFL-CIO President: Lawmakers Lack "Political Courage" to Tackle Unemployment (1/11/2010)]

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 11:14:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

It’s here, Honolulu Chinatown after Dark, in case that’s what you came for. It’s now more than 28,000 views and still going… it’s been picked up by a couple of university public health groups too. And tens of thousands of views via the newspaper and TV web pages.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 10:29:00 AM   9 comments - add your comment links to this post

Well, why not. Palin belongs at Fox News. See: Factually challenged news channel hires factually challenged Palin, which comments on a New York Times story.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 10:27:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

By Henry Curtis

The Draft Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan, written by SENTECH, under contract to Kauai County, has just been released ( www.kauainetwork.org/energysustainabilityplan.asp ).

The Preface states: “The Kaua`i Energy Sustainability Plan is an energy sustainability plan for the island of Kaua`i, not an energy sustainability plan for Kaua`i County government ... [nor] is not an energy sustainability plan for KIUC [Kauai Island Utility Co-op].” That is weird: the County is paying for a plan that is not their plan.

The Vision for Kauai is that the island will “have achieved 100% local energy sustainability” in 2030.

Aviation “is outside the scope of this analysis” and marine transportation is not mentioned. With the exception of citing one federal task force, climate change and global warming are also not mentioned. Life cycle analysis is restricted to financial costs only. Not mentioned are environmental and/or climate life cycle impacts and analysis. The focus of the Study is primarily, but not exclusively, on large central station generation.

Kauai has a “peak demand is projected to increase from 82.0 MW in 2009 to 126.0 MW in 2028.” A Black & Veatch study (“Renewable Energy Technology Assessments,” 2005) found that there is theoretically more than 1000 MW of renewable energy available on Kauai.

The theoretical levels of renewable energy include (a) Solar Photovoltaic (over 250 MW); (b) Wind (over 150 MW); (c) Wave (over 100 MW); (d) Solar Thermal (over 100 MW); (e) Biomass (nearly 100 MW) ; (f) Ocean Thermal (nearly 100 MW) ; (g) Ethanol (nearly 100 MW) ; (h) Hydropower (over 50 MW); and (i) Biodiesel (over 50 MW).

While the theoretical units “don’t include any technical, economic, land-use, environmental or other limitations on the resource” they are also low estimates. Thus Kauai has far more renewables than it could ever use.

The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for transportation is to build a combined ethanol/biodiesel plant using bioenergy crops such as Jatropha, Banagrass, Leucaena and Soy. The county fuel tax would be increased from 13¢/gallon to 50¢/gallon. Gasoline would cost “$4.00/gallon, a price at which gasoline demand was greatly reduced during the oil price run-up of 2008 where consumers started to reduce consumption of gasoline.” This would encourage the use of biofuel and electric vehicles.

The Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan’s solution for electricity is energy efficiency, building codes, and a mix of renewable energy: hydropower (45MW), concentrated solar power (30 MW), biomass/biodiesel (30 MW), Photovoltaic Electric (15 MW), and landfill gas (1.6 MW).

The hydropower estimate is high, considering the environmental and cultural impacts likely to be raised for any proposal. Excluded as solutions are garbage-to-energy and wind energy. While Kauai is home to large numbers of endangered and threatened birds which makes siting any large-scale wind farm problematic, micro-wind systems on rooftops using vertical or horizontal blades can be designed not to pose threats to birds and should be included as part of the solution.

“Based on estimates for the total cost to install, maintain, and operate the proposed mix of renewable energy systems, SENTECH Hawai’i projects that a total of $1.51 billion of private capital will be needed over 20 years.” Kauai has a population of 64,000. Thus this cost represents a little more than $1000/person/year.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 10:18:00 AM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The Honolulu Advertiser profiled gubernatorial candidate Duke Aiona today in a front-page article by Derrick DePledge, Aiona's gubernatorial campaign stresses 'balance' (1/11/2010). Good thing they put “balance” in quotes.

This may be the first article, and there will be many before election day, but I had hoped for some balance in covering each candidate.

This story omits a prominent Aiona characteristic—his inability to separate church and state. Although his public remarks about transforming Hawaii into “the first Christian state” have already sounded alarm bells, there’s no echo of them in this Advertiser article.

The Lt. Governor has overstepped by conducting zealous evangelism in his official capacity. Here is a snip from a commentary by David Shapiro:

The group, which calls itself Transformation Hawaii, hopes to gather 10,000 adherents at the Blaisdell Center this weekend for training on how to "transform Hawai'i to God's great plan."

Aiona, who is honorary chairman of the event, sent a letter over his official title urging church leaders to join the movement and "be the salt and the light."

"God is behind this," Aiona wrote. "I would like God to bless the people of Hawai'i and see God's love transform our state."

Other political leaders have been associated with Transformation Hawaii, including Kaua'i Mayor Brian Baptiste, state Sen. Norman Sakamoto and Honolulu Councilman Gary Okino, but Aiona has been especially prominent.

The lieutenant governor made a video promoting the event in which he urged viewers to "experience God's movement in Hawai'i."

"The movement is happening ... and we all have to be a part of it," he said.

In December, Aiona led 6,000 believers around the state in a "canopy of prayer," declaring that "Hawai'i belongs to Jesus."

He said then, "Our schools will become God's schools; our community will become God's community; our city will become God's city; our Islands will become God's Islands; our state will become God's state; and our Hawai'i will become God's Hawai'i." [Honolulu Advertiser, Aiona: God's love can transform Hawai'i, 5/18/2005]

Aiona has not hesitated to take his evangelical message right into the schools. From a United In Prayer report of a school visit:

Kealakehe High School – Barbara Behl

I am sending in a report for Kealakehe High School. We had between 100 and 125 people from at least 4 churches. We had worship, and then listened to the Lt. Governor's prayer and then prayer walked the school. After we were grouped, we called up all the students from the high schools and the pastors prayed for them.
…
It seems from reading the reports that the people who came are those committed to the power of prayer to change Hawaii as, Duke Aiona said, "Into the first Christian state."

Hawaii is probably the least Christian state, but that just means Aiona would have to work harder to achieve his agenda, should he be elected governor.

The omission of this troubling aspect of one of the leading candidates for the state’s highest office would indicate strong bias in Advertiser reporting if it continues. Let’s see what they do with this in the future.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/11/2010 07:07:00 AM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Hawaii is a world away from New York City. I’m a New Yorker like Barack Obama is from Hawaii. We both left.

But just as Obama can come back, it’s great to visit NYC, ride the subway, eat real bagels, whitefish, Jewish rye bread, check out the cheese at Fairway Markets, walk up and down 5th Avenue, have some Ethiopian food, browse used book stores, listen to the old accents and dialects, hear some Yiddish if I’m lucky (doesn’t really happen any more), shop in a real Whole Foods, visit Chelsea Market…

Culturally it’s the polar opposite of Hawaii. Plays, symphonies, Broadway (if you like that), Carnegie Hall, the Roundabout Theater (now grown up and famous, but we were early fans when it was tiny and intimate). Languages. Food. Nannies wheeling strollers up and down streets in Chelsea. Doormen. Real architecture. Cabs you can hail on the street. Central Park. Doormen hailing cabs in front of plush apartments on Central Park. Doormen tipping the cab driver ten bucks just for stopping.

Trouble is, it’s too expensive to spend much time in New York.

Listening to WBAI is something I do almost every day, though, right here in Hawaii. And today they celebrated 50 years.

I listen because they have great news and several other programs I like. Thanks to the Internet, the reception is better in Hawaii than it was when I lived right there in the city.

Public radio to me is not HPR or NPR. It’s WBAI and Pacifica. Instead of packaged programs they have something like 32 local producers at the one station. In New York, people do listen to the radio at all hours, so a program can run from 3-6 a.m. and have an audience. The city never sleeps.

Now, with podcasting, it’s possible to listen without having to sit in front of a radio at a particular time, and that’s how I do my WBAI listening. I usually catch the evening news while doing the dinner dishes.

Today they preempted regular programming to celebrate 50 years on the air. They brought back voices from yesteryear. Yeah, they sound older and maybe wiser now. The pimply kids I have frozen images of are now retired college professors.

I was an occasional volunteer and had a few adventures there (maybe I’ll relate one or two in another article). I remember when they were in a church and the AFP wire teletype sat in the bathtub. Staff translated the news from French. AP and UPI were not to be trusted any more then than they are now.

I remember hurriedly building my Heathkit AR-15 receiver so that it would be ready when Larry Josephson would turn on their stereo pilot for the first time. I made it by minutes (the cover wasn’t on the unit, but it worked). Larry turned on the stereo pilot (applause in the background) and the red light on the front of the AR-15 lit up. He turned it off. He turned it on. He turned it off. Like a kid. All over the city red lights went on and off at his command. What power!

Larry Josephson must have hated the pledge drives, with the fake matching funds and contrived goals that are pretty much the same as you hear now on HPR. So one day he determined to play Kate Smith singing God Bless America (mp3) continually until everyone paid up. It didn’t work. Listeners were furious, and many pledged just to get that god-awful noise to stop but never sent any money. To this day I cannot tolerate pledge drives. When HPR goes into pledge mode, I tune to KTUH if I don’t happen to have my mp3 player in the car. Honest, I have flashbacks of Kate Smith singing. The version Larry played back then was much more dynamic than the one I have linked to above.

Larry was my morning listening before going off to work. He was to be there tonight for the celebration, though I didn’t catch him yet in the podcast.

Bob Fass was doing Radio Unnamable when we lived in NY, and he’s still there doing it today. The program starts at midnight. Amazing to have persisted with it so long (40+ years!). I did catch him just now. His voice is completely different. From the Wikipedia:

Fass’s program, Radio Unnameable, beginning in the 1963, broadcast the work, and impromptu interviews, of counterculture figures such as Bob Dylan, and the first performance of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant".

That performance  of Alice’s Restaurant was longer, as I recall, than the 18-minute version commonly available today.

Thirty-two producers (or whatever the current number might be) is hyper-local programming. It’s what we talk about doing with journalism on the web, at least in one formula. WBAI has been hyper-local for 50 years now. They are also thoroughly modern. Every program is podcast and archived. It’s done automatically. A program is usually available for downloading within 10 minutes after it finishes broadcasting.

Oh—one last thing. In Hawaii, even if you contribute to HPR, you don’t get any say in what’s broadcast. WBAI listeners get to vote for the station board and participate in other decisions. It wasn’t always that way, The Pacifica network went through some turmoil and a revolution before becoming what it is today.

More on WBAI adventures some other time. Now I’m going to plug in the ear buds and catch up on their celebration.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/10/2010 11:00:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Labor news is almost always disappeared news in this country. I’m sure that this is deliberate, and part of the reason for the decline of unionization in recent decades.

Sam Smith highlighted this story (pdf) in the current edition of his Progressive Review, writing in part:

THE MOST NEGLECTED LABOR STORY OF LAST YEAR

Last fall, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a multibillion dollar cooperative based in the Basque region of Spain, formed an alliance with the United Steelworkers, the largest industrial trade union in the U.S. The two announced that they would develop Mondragon manufacturing cooperatives in the United States and Canada that would "adapt collective bargaining principles."

This is one of the most important labor stories of the year but it has gotten tiny attention in the conventional press. In the Cooperative Business Journal, Erbin Crowell examined the history and implications of this development.

If you don’t know about the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, this article (click on first link above) will be a good introduction. Otherwise, there is Google.

The Mondragon Cooperatives are different from ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) in very significant ways. Control stays with the employees. ESOPs are often taken over, but the Mondragon model is different. It is not based on stock ownership but rather on 'one worker, one vote' ownership.

This arrangement removes the adversarial relationship between labor and capital.

I’m sure steel could be made within this model, but not so sure how a steel plant might be acquired. Also, with manufacturing continuing to decline in this country, will there be a demand for steel anyway? I know these are superficial and naive questions. Perhaps more information on the Mondragon/United Steelworkers relationship will come out in the future.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/10/2010 06:46:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Follow Rusti’s campaign on Twitter. Click here.

Rusti the Orangutan has declared his candidacy for governor of Hawaii, though he hasn’t yet purchased a hat to throw into the ring. (See: Rusti announces run for Governor of Hawaii (1/4/2010) ).

Yesterday, after Inouye’s endorsement of Colleen Hanabusa at a meeting I was attending, I decided to question Rusti about the scramble for the 1st Congressional District opened up by Neil Abercrombie’s planned reservation.

DISAPPEARED NEWS: Rusti, why did you decide to run for governor of Hawaii instead of joining the less-crowded field aiming at Neil Abercrombie’s seat in Congress?

RUSTI: I’m just not that into going to Congress. Depending on who or whom you speak with, they describe Congress as either a circus or a zoo. I’ve done my time, no more of that for me.

DN: Wouldn’t it be an easier race for you, though?

RUSTI: I’m not afraid of any challenge. I’m bigger than any of the candidates who have declared so far. My name recognition is better, too, everyone has heard of me. You can buy postcards with my picture on them.

If you don’t live in Honolulu, who knows the other candidates?

This is a banana republic, remember. I believe the main reason for sending candidates to the House in Washington is to get them out of Hawaii. Which ever of them wins, they could be far away from here for a long, long time, and for a couple of them that’s probably what voters want, don’t you think?

DN: In the gubernatorial race, are you bigger even than Mufi?

RUSTI: Yes, if I stand up and beat my chest, you’ll see that he’s a wimp compared to me. I also don’t spend much time singing sweet songs into microphones. It’s not my style. The governor’s race is about power, and in a banana republic you have to master the chest-beating, not the crooning.

DN: What about Abercrombie, who is coming back from Washington, where he was a strong liberal representative of Hawaii?

RUSTI: Remember my theory of why we send people to Congress. Abercrombie is coming back. Is that really want we want? I remember a yellow Checker cab. I remember a comic book about him, I remember the City Council.

DN: Tell me about Colleen Hanabusa’s chances.

RUSTI: She’s obviously going to be on the spot when the Senate takes up the civil unions bill. If they do that, expect a huge mobilization against it by the churches. Last session she helped kill it, we just have to see what she does this time. If the bill comes up, all eyes will be on her. It could be a lose-lose proposition no matter what she does. The best thing for her is if it doesn’t come up until after the special election.

All Djou and Case have to do is keep their mouths shut for the duration and let Hanabusa hang herself. For either of them, keeping their mouths shut would normally be an incredible ordeal, but in this case I bet they’ll manage it.

DN: You seem to be very up on current affairs, for someone who doesn’t read a newspaper.

RUSTI: Reading the newspapers in this town only makes you think you know what’s going on. In a true banana republic, everything, and I mean everything, is decided in back rooms someplace. It’s like that at the Legislature. No matter how much testimony they get, it’s what goes on at some secretive conference committee, or what the Speaker or the President orders, that gets done.

As to the Governor, the press can only print what they’ve been fed. The gov’s office is so opaque that no one knows what goes on there. Then take the DOE… please. The superintendent resigned and the Board of Education just sat on the information until she had only a day left. Sheesh.

Only in a banana republic.

DN: Well, how do you get your information?

RUSTI: I know things because a little bird told me. You know how you walk down the street in the evening and the mynah birds are making all that noise up in the trees? What do you think they’re talking about? Politics.

They are everywhere (except in the Governor’s office). They’re smart. They know everything that’s happening.

And they have been tweeting about it long before you started using Twitter. So I have my own intelligence network.

DN: If you are elected governor, will you have an open-door policy?

RUSTI: Heck no. Power has its privileges.

Follow Rusti’s campaign on Twitter. Click here.
Click for more Rusti.

Support programs to protect orangutans and other endangered species. See this page from the Australian Orangutan Project for a list of other projects you can check out on the web.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/10/2010 01:26:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The Associated Press has spread the news that Hawaii has no money for the upcoming special election to fill Congressman Neil Abercrombie’s seat when he resigns at the end of February.

Cash-strapped Hawaii can't afford to pay for an election to replace a congressman who is planning to step down next month to run for governor, potentially leaving 600,000 urban Honolulu residents without representation in Washington, D.C. [Seattle Times, Cash-strapped Hawaii says it can't afford election, 1/9/2010]

Well, you observant readers of Disappeared News already knew this for many months (e.g., since July 15, 2009: Administration cuts put Hawaii 2010 elections in jeopardy). In other words, we can’t afford the election because of a 94% cut by Governor Lingle Lingle of the Office of Elections budget.

In fact, Hawaii can’t hold any election in 2010 unless money is found somewhere that the gov will allow to be used, or unless she relents and releases the money she is withholding.

None of that was discussed in this AP story, though. The story did mention the possibility of using some federal funds if only Hawaii would ask about it and receive permission.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/09/2010 06:02:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Senator Daniel Inouye addresses Hawaii Alliance for Retired Americans at ILWU Hall

Left to right: Sen. Daniel Inouye, state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa. Seated: Al Hamai, President, Hawaii Alliance of Retired Americans, Luis Duran, Director, Alliance for Retired Americans

Mayor Mufi Hannemann, Rep. Neil Abercrombie and Sen. Daniel Inouye addressed the Third Biennial HARA Convention Saturday morning. Several minutes after concluding his address, at about 11:45 a.m., Sen. Inouye returned to the podium with State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa and gave her his endorsement to fill the Congressional seat to be vacated by Abercrombie at the end of February.

Inouye related two anecdotes about Ed Case. The first concerned a request that the Hawaii delegation made to Case not to run for the vacancy created by the death of Patsy Mink. Inouye said that they preferred that her husband, John Mink, take the seat, take down her pictures and arrange her papers before the next general election. Case refused, Inouye said, and he contested and won the seat.

At a later time, Inouye said, he assembled the Hawaii delegation and questioned Case about whether he intended to run for Akaka’s seat in the Senate. Inouye said that Case told him he would not, but Inouye soon learned that Case had already printed up bumper stickers and campaign posters. Inouye indicated that for these reasons he could not endorse Ed Case.

Inouye described Sen. Hanabusa’s background and experience favorably, mentioning to the audience of mostly retired union members that Hanabusa is a labor lawyer.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/09/2010 05:09:00 PM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Brad Parsons is the analyst who effectively predicted the bankruptcy of Hawaii Superferry by estimating that it was not bringing in enough revenue each month to cover its costs. He also developed the Barf-O-Meter, which translated surf forecasts into a discomfort index for any “large capacity passenger ferry.”

Brad has just released a forecast that disputes what he describes as the optimistic economic forecasts of the Council on Revenues. His forecast is based on forward hotel bookings. See: Hawaii Visitor Industry Cratering as we Speak (1/8/2010).

The heart of his prediction is this:

Many hotels across the state have reservation bookings for January and February of 30% or less.

If this plays out, he says, it will be reported in March or April, and the budget deficit will be significantly larger than currently estimated.

Perhaps an economist will comment on this, but more likely we’ll just have to wait for that first quarter report.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/08/2010 10:02:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I thought you would enjoy seeing some photos of the Molokai Clubhouse that Disappeared News readers, along with other advocates and mental health groups, helped save.

As you will recall, the Grinch Governor nearly wiped out the facility, just renovated with the help of $100,000 donated by the Honolulu Metro Rotary Club, by firing the last remaining employee effective December 31. Then the public swung into action, saving his job at the 59th minute of the 11th hour. More than 30 people are served by this clubhouse, the only program of its kind on Molokai.

Here are some pictures of the construction, arranged in a collage. The second photo is a group shot of Honolulu Metro Rotary members assembled in front of the Clubhouse.

Finally, a link to an article in today’s Advertiser. Too bad the article doesn’t give an account of how it was just saved and the challenges it still faces.

Click images for larger.

Advertiser article: Contract keeps Moloka'i mental health center open (1/8/2010).

Related articles:

Public protests save Molokai Clubhouse (Disappeared News, 12/31/2009)

The Lingle who stole Christmas, (Disappeared News, 12/28/2009)

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/08/2010 08:38:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became the first person to fly solo from Honolulu, Hawaii to Oakland, California. The distance was 2,048 miles. The flight was also the first civilian flight to carry a two-way radio.

I don’t know if any commemoration is planned for Monday, but there ought to be something. Given the gender bias of the day, it is very significant that the first “person” to make this flight was a woman.

To read more, there is the Wikipedia entry, and an official website. I noted that Earhart took then First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt “on an impromptu late-night flight over the nation’s capital–two iconic women leaders looking down over the most powerful city in the world.” Awesome.

There are Hawaii photos on a Department of Transportation website here.

Earhart taught at Purdue University. A comprehensive collection of photos, maps and documents is on their website. There is also a biography of her in a guide to her papers. It describes her 1935 flights:

In 1935, Amelia became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the American
mainland, landing in Oakland, California. With this flight, Amelia became the first person to
fly solo across the Pacific Ocean and the first person who had flown solo across both the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. That same year, she became the first person to fly solo from Los
Angeles to Mexico City, by official invitation of the Mexican government.

In Honolulu, there is a memorial stone in a cutout along Diamond Head road called Amelia Earhart Lookout. It usually goes unnoticed by tourists stopping to snap photos of surfers just offshore. The view is excellent. Enough people know about it that the image of Earhart’s airplane is usually kept bright and shiny. The memorial was sponsored by Honolulu resident Genigna Green, who was killed in an auto accident in California in which Mrs. Amy Earhart, Amelia’s mother, was injured, in 1938. The memorial was created by sculptor Kate Kelly.

The inscription on the plaque reads
"Amelia Earhart
First person to fly alone from Hawaii to North America
January 11, 1935"

The airplane in the upper left glows because the brass has been rubbed clean and shiny by numerous visitors.

The Google satellite pic shows location of memorial stone at one side of an ample parking area. The spot has a great view of the coast—to me, it resembles the Mediterranean coastline around Nice looking towards Italy.

And there was a movie. Here’s the trailer. Check out also the related videos when this plays.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/08/2010 12:04:00 PM   1 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

A car went over the sidewalk, onto the grass and crashed into a tree at about 7:30 a.m. at the condo where I live as I was returning from the gym this morning. No one was injured, thank goodness, though the tree was damaged.

I didn’t have a camera or even my cellphone with me, so I went upstairs, got the camera, and came down thinking it wouldn’t hurt to take some pics of this. If for no other reason, I own part of that tree. And who knows, the driver might turn out to be a DUI politician or “Lost” cast member or something.

It would not even be worth blogging about except that an HPD officer came over, stood between me and the car, and said something like, “Hey, you investigating?” I said no. He said “What you doing?” I answered, “I’m taking pictures.” I told him I live here. No use. That didn’t work for him, and he prevented me from taking any more pictures. I didn’t have paper and pencil to take down his badge number, and frankly, aside from this little blog post, it’s not worth pursuing.

In fact, I should thank him, because if he had not stood between me and the car, I wouldn’t have anything to write about this minor incident. No one hurt, little damage to the car, no news except that cop obstructs photographer.

I could have taken more pictures from a distance down the street, I’m sure. Anyway, I already had a few, and as I said, this is totally unimportant.

If I had press credentials, would a cop have let me take my pics? Probably. But an ordinary citizen gets chased away.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 1/08/2010 08:48:00 AM   2 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Obama to the right of John McCain? Check out this article in OpEd News by Richard Clark (snippet):

Candidate Obama repeatedly blasted Phil Gramm and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which Gramm had pushed through Congress with President Bill Clinton's support. This was legislation that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act and thereby radically deregulated the financial industry, allowing hundreds of billions of new profits to be made by Wall Street, at great cost to the American public.

But now John McCain and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash. have sponsored a bill to repeal Gramm's bank-friendly legislation, while captive Obama seeks to preserve it! [OpEdNews, Is Obama a captive of America's most powerful banks and corporations?, 1/7/2010]

McCain probably stands with the majority of Americans while Obama is viewed as owned by banks and his Clinton-era bankster appointees.

How odd that it now remains for John McCain to stand up to the oversized and overly powerful banks:

"I want to ensure that we never stick the American taxpayer with another $700 billion--or even larger--tab to bail out the financial industry," McCain proclaimed in introducing his legislation. "This country would be better served if we limit the activities of these financial institutions."

As we all know, just the opposite had happened under the great bailout: The big investment houses of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were allowed to suddenly attain the status of commercial banks in order to qualify for federal bailouts, and the once staid commercial Bank of America was encouraged by the Fed to buy out the investment house Merrill Lynch. As a result, banking has never before been concentrated in so few hands.

Expect more Democrat retirements as they realize that voter support will evaporate if job loss and foreclosures continue towards election day 2012. Instead of delivering change, Congress and Obama have saved only their banker buddies. Equally bad, they are now saving insurance and drug companies at our expense.

This is not the change we expected.

At least, Obama will find a warm welcome on Wall Street as he hunts for a new job in 2013. The rest of the country may still be unemployed.