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Maui County
The Maui 10
Who's the county's most powerful player?
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May 10, 2007
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1
1
Alexander & Baldwin
2
2
Maui Land & Pineapple Co.
3
3
Tesoro Hawai`i
4
4
Dowling Co.
5
5
Weinberg Foundation
6
9 Monsanto Hawai`i
7
6 Hawaiian Telcom
8
7
Goodfellow Brothers
9
8
Maui Electric Co.
10
10 Wailuku
Water Co.
GENETICALLY MODIFIED POWER
Haven't heard much from genetically modified organism
(GMO)/herbicide manufacturer Monsanto lately, but they benefit this
week from news that University of Hawai`i researchers have expanded
their GMO work on "bananas, tomatoes, petunias and lettuce," according
to the Apr. 30 Honolulu Advertiser.
Genetically modified, disease-resistant petunias? My God, man, do you
think the world is ready for them? Can you imagine what would happen if
something went wrong and a super petunia began multiplying? It's simply
too frightening to contemplate. But I digress: opposition to GMOs
around the world has been steadily growing for years—focused intently
on the fact that scientists still can't be certain of the long-term
health effects caused by tinkering with DNA—but if UH is charging
headlong in making disease-resistant fruits and vegetables, then
Monsanto and its various super corn and soybean seeds can sit back and
relax.
TERRIBLE TWOS
Oh Hawaiian Telcom—will the fun never end? "We're turning the corner," HT CEO Mike Ruley said in the May 1 Advertiser.
"We're investing literally hundreds of millions—not millions—but
hundreds of millions in technologies… to generate new levels of
customer service and a new level of customer experience." Turning a
corner? Is he serious? Carlyle Group took over the company two years
ago—that's a hell of a corner to be turning, Mike—and customer service
has been pretty crappy ever since. In fact, the Advertiser
couldn't resist putting a graph of HT complaints alongside their story:
in the 15 months since January 2006 (data for March and April of this
year isn't available), Hawaiian Telcom has failed to meet its goal of
responding to 85 percent of customer complaints within 20 seconds for
14 of those months. Basically, the company barely met the goal that
first month, and has been struggling to return ever since. Things were
so monumentally fouled up in May 2006 that customer service reps
responded to a mere eight percent of complaints within 20 seconds. But
Ruley says all that is a thing of the past. And when the Advertiser stops printing graphs of your complaint response times, we'll believe it. MTW
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