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August 27, 2009 HYPER LOCAL
First the carrot, now the stick: Back in May, you’ll recall, the state offered delinquent taxpayers a one-month window to make good on their debts without penalty. Now, Maui County is taking a different approach. Beginning in October, the County will post a list of the “top 25 delinquent accounts” and the names of all taxpayers who’ve been delinquent for three years or more at mauipropertytax.com. In addition to giving everyone a much-needed dose of schadenfreude, the list is obviously meant to motivate through shame. The County says it’s owed more than $8.6 million in unpaid property taxes; recovering even a fraction of that would be a significant windfall in these belt-tightening times. So how do you find out if your name’s on the list (if you don’t know already)? Call the Real Property Tax Division at 270-7697 or visit mauicounty.gov/finance… It’s probably hopeless for a man to support Go Topless Day and be taken seriously. And yet, honestly, my intentions are pure. (See—you’re snickering, aren’t you?) I bring this up because on August 23, sunbathers at Little Beach celebrated (by doing what they do every day) with like-minded nudies across the country who feel, according to gotopless.org, that “women have the same constitutional right to be bare chested in public places as men.” To prove the point, the site presents two photos: one of an obese man with his shirt off, the other of a woman (with comparable-sized breasts) being forced to cover up. This has always made such intrinsic sense to me I’m flabbergasted it’s still open for debate. Yet another example of the repressive Puritan claws that are still imbedded in the American consciousness…
LOCAL
To truly understand how far the bar has been lowered, how completely our leaders have devolved into a gaggle of bickering teenagers, listen to the (supposedly) joking asides offered by elected officials. The latest example: Sen. Dan Inouye paid a visit to Oahu this week to meet with the governor, the four mayors and other key players to get a stimulus money progress report. As reported by the AP (though it was buried at the end of the story), Inouye responded to the mostly positive assessments by saying his fellow Senators would be “extremely envious when I tell them we had a hearing and no one screamed.” Much truth is said in jest… So the Superferry has gone from inter-island vessel to bankrupt boondoggle to…verb. I first caught wind of this courtesy of Brad Parsons over at the Hawaii Superferry unofficial blog (hisuperferry.blogspot.com), who pointed to an August 20 Honolulu Advertiser story in which Rep. Neil Abercrombie said he was concerned Oahu’s rail project was “going to be Superferried.” I was prepared to give Abercrombie credit for coining the phrase, but a Google search reveals Neil was late to the party. In a July 24 letter to the Advertiser, Bill Spencer, president of the Hawaii Venture Capital Association, uses the term in a different context. But Spencer isn’t the originator either. The earliest use of the word I could find is a June 9 comment connected to a Honolulu Star-Bulletin story about, again, the rail project, posted by “railfan.” So until further notice, congrats, railfan—you got there first… Occasionally, I subject myself to FOX News. Not because I enjoy yelling at my television (though that can be fun), but because it’s important to hear what the other side is saying, especially when the other side holds sway over millions of allegedly sentient, voting-age citizens. During one of my recent sojourns into the belly of the GOP spin machine, I caught a Sean Hannity segment about health care subtly titled “Universal Nightmare.” (Yes, they used the blood-drippy Freddy Krueger font.) The piece was an “investigative report” by correspondent Griff Jenkins (totally his real name), who flew to Hawaii to examine the Keiki Care program—and by “examine” I mean “ham-fistedly present it as a cautionary tale about how government-subsidized health care is doomed to fail.” (Hannity set the bit up by calling Keiki Care a “scheme,” conjuring images of a bunch of cigar-chomping bureaucrats cackling as they hatch a diabolical plot to make sure kids can go to the doctor.) After the toss, here’s how Griff kicks things off: “Welcome to Hawaii, home to surfing and the aloha spirit and the childhood home of President Barack Obama. It’s also home to a failed experiment in universal health care, an experiment whose lessons seem lost on its most famous son.” Of course, Keiki Care wasn’t a “universal” health care plan, but a limited, targeted (and admittedly flawed) attempt to cover children who weren’t eligible for Medicaid but whose parents couldn’t afford private insurance. But it did involve some government money (half of the funding came from the state, the other half from the private Hawaii Medical Services Association). So in the eyes of the rabid pro-privatization crowd it was one step away from re-branding the state flag with a hammer and sickle. Griff mixes in sound bites from a few politicians, including Gov. Lingle (who pulled the plug on Keiki Care last November) and Republican state Senator Sam Slom, and in the end concludes that “as the president and the Democratic-led Congress rush in an unprecedented fashion towards universal health care for all Americans…they may want to take a closer look at how that worked in the president’s birth state.” Great idea, Griff. Someone should really do that…
NOT LOCAL
Speaking of FOX News—I know, I’m a glutton for punishment—here’s what the top headline on their Web site said on August 25: “Agency Admits 425G of Federal Stimulus Ended up…Behind Bars.” (Can’t you just hear the prison-door-clanking-shut sound effect?) Apparently, 3,900 $250 stimulus checks were mailed to incarcerated individuals. The horror! The outrage! The liberal waste! But wait: way down in the ninth paragraph we find out that more than half the inmates were actually owed the checks because they weren’t in jail at the time they were cut. The remaining 1,700 who were mistakenly sent checks represent…wait for it…0.000000019 percent of the total recipients. FOX News: They Make Insignificant Things Seem Important to Forward a Blatantly Partisan Agenda, You Decide. MTW
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