Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

This is getting scary. Honolulu, our fair city, is so broke that it has to cut back on bus service (if you believe that is the reason). Yet the Honolulu Weekly was able to list up more than triple the PR spending that appeared in yesterday’s Star-Advertiser article.

The Honolulu Weekly has done their homework far better than has our daily newspaper. If you were shocked by the $3,278,424 in PR spending identified by the Star-Advertiser yesterday (and referred to in Spammed by the city, 6/26/2012), you’re going to love the table appearing in today’s weekly that identifies $11,713,689 they’ve managed to account for so far. There are still some blanks to be filled in, some expenditures not yet uncovered.

Check out the table. It’s a pdf file you can view in the browser or download. The Weekly doesn’t block readers with a paywall as the S-A does.

According to an interview with Gov. Cayetano also appearing in today’s issue, the $11 million is still short. Here’s a snip from the interview:

[Weekly]: Meanwhile, HART keeps spending on pro-rail PR, is it about $11 million to date?

[Cayetano]: It’s unprecedented. I would say $20 million or more. The $11 million doesn’t include $15 million spent by PRP. When [City Councilmembers] asked [HART] why [they were] spending all this on PR, [they were] told the FTA required it. They do not.

If I win, the one thing I will not be paying for is the stuff they paid for PR people who were on Mufi’s team. People move around between being subcontractors and employees. The flow of information goes like this: [He details a pathway--Former Hanneman staffers who get highly paid jobs with equally highly paid consultants and feed the PR machine.] Hannemann’s former campaign chairs, how are they worth $300,000-$400,000 a year? To set up a speakers’ bureau? The public is entitled to know the names of these people.

[Honolulu Weekly, Being Nice, 6/27/2012]

Again, the Weekly has no paywall. You can read the interview in full by clicking on the link, and click here to read the editorial Railgate. The editorial is hard to snip from and well worth reading, so please click over. The writer has outlined the parameters of what she calls another Great Mahele.

This is alternative news at its best. And the paper is free! May they prosper somehow.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 6/27/2012 07:15:00 PM