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|  NewsCoconut WirelessOct 29 2009So now we’ve married the War on Terror with the War on Drugs, and have picked as the central staging ground a country affectionately dubbed “the graveyard of empires” (just ask...
| NewsHawaii and Maui Renewable Energy RundownAre we making progress toward energy independence? There's good news and bad newsOct 08 2009A few items of interest on the renewable energy (RE) front bubbled to the surface this week. Since the Energy Expo a month ago, I’ve been following a curious cover-up locally by...
|  NewsMaui Dep't of Liquor Control Minor Decoy Busts......what defines success?Oct 08 2009Some of the most interesting moments at Liquor Control meetings happen on the margins, when board members and department officials aren’t directly addressing the cases at hand, but other...
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October 15, 2009 HYPER LOCAL
Interesting item in the October 13 Maui News, about a decision by the County Council's Infrastructure Management Committee to table a bill that would ban Styrofoam takeout containers. As is often the case, the juiciest nugget was buried near the end: "[Rep.] Joe Souki, speaking for the American Chemistry Council and not, he told the committee, as a state legislator, said: 'Simply banning polystyrene will not reduce litter. It just changes the type of litter.'" The American Chemistry Council, for those unfamiliar, is a lobby organization with a member list that reads like a who's-who of nefarious multinational heavy-hitters: Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Big Oil, Big Carbon, etc. It's wonderful to hear that Joe can change hats so easily, working hard for the interests of his Central Maui constituents one minute and shilling for his big business cronies the next. To rephrase Souki's own words: Simply getting rid of one bought-and-sold political hack won't end undue corporate influence in government. But it wouldn't hurt…. Even if your sympathies lie with the workers whose jobs are in danger, it's difficult to miss the irony in the slogan "water for all" being used by the same people who are defending the right of Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar and parent company Alexander & Baldwin to maintain private control over Maui's water resources. Quoted in a Maui News piece titled "Chamber: Water for all favored by many," Earthjustice attorney Isaac Moriwake blasted HC&S's efforts "to hoard all Nai Wai Eha stream water as their private property to use, sell and even waste as they see fit." Though it gives ink to voices on both sides of the debate, the piece loses its façade of impartiality when it ends with information about how readers can sign the Chamber of Commerce petition or write letters of support (no information about how to help stream-flow restoration efforts is provided). Of course, the fact that Maui News publisher Joe Bradley—who in the same issue penned an editorial comment in support of HC&S—is the Chamber's chairman has nothing to do with this thinly disguised bias. (Before you go firing off an indignant missive about how Maui Time is throwing stones from a house made of that ultra-fragile breakaway glass they use in movies: the key difference is, we make no pretense of objectivity nor do we claim to be the daily paper of record.)… As Maui boy Shane Victorino and his Philadelphia Phillies continue their march toward a second straight World Series, Valley Isle baseball fans got another piece of good news this week: the Golden Baseball League (GBL), an independent professional league based out of California, has announced plans to form a team on Maui, with games to be played at the War Memorial Complex in Wailuku. (The GBL is perhaps best known for giving aging Major Leaguers like stolen base king Ricky Henderson and steroid user/whistle blower Jose Canseco a chance to extend their careers.) Obviously there's some red tape left to hack through, but on Tuesday the Council Committee on Budget and Finance approved a permit for the league that extends from May to September of next year…
LOCAL
Social networking and government update: A search for "Linda Lingle" on Facebook turns up at least three anti-Lingle groups (it's possible more have formed since this writing): Impeach Linda Lingle!!! (31 members); Impeach Linda Lingle (only 10 members—maybe it's the lack of exclamation points?); and Anti-Linda Lingle Group (84 members). There's a fair bit of membership crossover, but may I make a humble suggestion? Get together, folks. Strength in numbers!…
NOT LOCAL
Though the topic has been beaten to death, buried, exhumed, reanimated and beaten to death again, I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. Those weighing in fall into three distinct camps: the rabid anti-Obama zealots who criticize anything related to the President; the doe-eyed Obama apologists who swoon at his every move; and everyone else. Predictably, the first two groups pounced immediately, staked out their pre-determined positions and began lobbing verbal grenades at each other, while the rest of us were left to cover our heads and dodge the shrapnel. Here's the message that's getting lost: this is all symbolic fluff. Yes, the Peace Prize comes with a cash award, but Obama has pledged to give that to charity. Yes, it's endowed with some prestige, but honestly—name the last five Nobel Peace Prize winners. (No fair Googling.) What we've gotten is a week of shouting about nothing (which pretty well sums up American cable news and punditry in general), and another distraction from the very real, very pressing, very dire issues that peskily refuse to go away no matter how tight we scrunch up our eyes and cover our ears and sing la-la-la-la-la. If the prize motivates Obama to sack up and start making tough, necessary decisions, great. Beyond that, with all due respect to our esteemed Scandinavian friends, let's drop the damn subject. Jacob Shafer, Maui Time Weekly
Tags: Maui Politics
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