Source: Maui Time, Maui News, Best of Maui, Maui Activities

Coconut Wireless
The YEAR In Review

by Jacob Shafer

December 25, 2008

JANUARY

The year begins inauspiciously, with the Superferry limping out of the starting gate, hampered by controversy and protests and allowed to make the trek between Oahu and Maui (or, often, not make the trek due to uncooperative weather) only because of a governmental end-around signed by Gov. Linda Lingle…A bad sports omen: After getting hammered in the Sugar Bowl, University of Hawaii football coach June Jones ditches the Warriors and takes $2 million to relocate to, of all places, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas…Archeologist Theresa Donham and environmental activist Lucienne De Naie release a 470-page book about the cultural history of Makena and make it available for free online. For a brief moment, it seems like those fighting to protect Makena from development might actually be strong enough to win, despite the odds…In spite of his popularity on Maui, Rep. Dennis Kucinich ends his longshot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, leaving some young African-American Senator from Illinois as the only remaining Dem in the race who opposed the Iraq War from the start. Yeah, like he’s got a shot…

FEBRUARY

Over 100 people show up at a County Council meeting concerning Wailea 670, the controversial Charlie Jencks-backed development. Some say it’ll provide a needed economic boost, others say we need unspoiled land more than we need another golf course and more luxury homes. Wonder how this one will turn out?…Chelsea Clinton makes an appearance in Maui to stump for her mom, addressing a small-but-packed room at the David K. Trask Building in Wailuku, which also houses the Department of Liquor Control. Considering Chelsea danced the hula (poorly, by her own admission), we hope no alcohol was served; or, if it was, that the former First Daughter did her dance within a clearly designated area marked off with duct tape. Hey, the rules are the rules…Despite Chelsea’s best efforts, Barack Obama handily wins Hawaii ’s Democratic Caucus, in which roughly 40,000 people participate. Wow, that Obama guy sure has folks excited, and not just here in his home state. Can’t  possibly last though. I mean, he’s up against the Clintons…

MARCH

Scanning the headlines, Editor Anthony Pignataro notes that “the sub-prime mortgage-lending crisis is ballooning into a full-fledged cataclysm and may in fact be dragging the entire nation into recession.” Oh come now, I’m sure our leaders in Washington will rise to the challenge and head this thing off rather than waiting too long and then going into reactionary panic mode and dishing out federal cheese willy-nilly…Despite normally pro-development councilmembers Bill Medeiros and Riki Hokama switching sides to vote with the “nays,” Wailea 670 narrowly gets the council’s stamp of approval. Closer than expected, but this ain’t horseshoes or hand grenades…Finding the skies something less than friendly, Aloha Airlines files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in four years. Skyrocketing fuel costs, an inter-island fare war with rival go! and the beginnings of a pretty serious visitor downturn all play a role. The biggest loser, of course, is the average passenger, who now has one less option to help keep fares reasonable, or at least not stratospherically high…And how about a little more bad news? Molokai Ranch, which employs 120 people at its various operations on the island, announces plans to shut down at month’s end…Still not depressed? The Iraq War celebrates (if that’s the right word, which it definitely isn’t) its 5th anniversary and its 4,000th American casualty…

APRIL

Rob Parsons investigates the deadly ecological implications of HECO’s decision to import palm oil from Southeast Asia. An extremely important and informative read, but not exactly the feel-good story of the year…ATA joins Aloha in the ranks of out-of-business airlines. We’re out in the middle of the ocean here, and our options for crossing that massive expanse of saltwater are shrinking faster than the President’s approval ratings…Speaking of the President: the race to replace him remains, as The Daily Show has so aptly dubbed it, a real clusterf#%$. On one side, Hillary Clinton hangs on, party unity be damned, and we’re learning more about superdeleagtes than we ever cared to. On the other side, the old cranky POW who was declared politically dead on more than one occasion beat out the Mormon, the cross-dressing Mayor of New York, the Southern Baptist minister and the loony Libertarian. Is this a presidential campaign or the setup of a really weird joke? (Answer: both.)…

MAY

As part of our ongoing effort to make the Department of Liquor Control love us, Maui Time reports that newly minted Liquor Commissioner James T. Viela was popped for DUI in 2005 and Viela promptly resigns. “Personal reasons” are cited, but in a moment of candor Viela tells LC Watch “I resigned when your article came out in the paper.”…Kate Bradshaw examines the controversy surrounding downhill bike tours on Haleakala summit, exposing yet again the clash between (sometimes) clueless tourists and (sometimes) cranky locals…Even as they keep approving mansions and golf courses in South Maui, the County Council wags its finger at citizens over water use, in the wake of an announcement from the Department of Water Supply that portions of the Valley Isle are in a state of drought. And of course they don’t see, or choose to ignore, the hypocrisy. Which is why God invented Coconut Wireless…After five years of exemplary service, Editor Anthony Pignataro signs off…

JUNE

With math and her party’s leadership ganging up against her, Clinton finally concedes to Obama and promises to throw her support behind him…Economic belts may be getting tightened, but actual belts are another matter. Greg Mebel weighs in on Hawaii’s rapidly swelling obesity problem and delivers the heavy news that Maui is the state’s chubbiest county…Phillip Prais, Lahaina’s beloved-but-controversial preacher man, passes away, leaving his familiar space under the Banyan Tree a little emptier…So much for bombs bursting in air: with drought conditions worsening, retailers announce they’ll be selling less fireworks in the weeks leading up to Independence Day…Opponents of Wailea 670 refuse to say die. With attorney Lance Collins leading the charge, a group of South Maui residents brings a Sunshine Law challenge. Even if it fails (and we don’t mean to be pessimistic, but…) it’s an effective stall tactic…Back on Molokai, residents get more bad news as the PUC gives the go-ahead to massive water rate hikes after Molokai Properties LLC cries financial insolvency…

JULY

Yours truly arrives on-island just in time to help bang out the annual Best of Maui bonanza, the biggest issue of the year (not that I’m complaining). Meanwhile, former MTW Associate Editor and Holoholo Girl Samantha Campos assumes my old position at the Bay Area alt weekly the Pacific Sun. So of course I use this Trading Places-esque occurrence as an excuse to interview Sam and write a totally self-congratulatory fluff piece…The filing deadline for the county and state elections passes and the biggest shakeup is probably Councilmember Michelle Anderson’s announcement that she won’t seek reelection. Instead, she endorses her friend and former mentor Wayne Nishiki…In what looks to be a case of making-an-example-by-throwing-the-book, the county brings legal action against a California woman for, ahem, allegedly turning her Kihei home into a TVR without the requisite conditional use permit…As the economy continues to stall, Maui Land & Pineapple lays off over a quarter of its workforce…

AUGUST

Hey, remember those ML&P layoffs we just told you about? Well, there’s a wrinkle. And by wrinkle we mean big steaming pile of corporate crap: less than a year before the company fired nearly 300 people, it paid some $4.1 million in cash and stocks to CEO David Cole. Shockingly, my attempts to land an interview with Mr. Cole are unsuccessful…Barack Obama engages in a rock star world tour, visiting the Middle East and speaking to huge crowds in Europe. John McCain stays home and makes attack ads featuring Paris Hilton…As Councilmember Mike Victorino basks in the good news that he’s running unopposed for his Wailuku seat, son Shane and his team, the Philadelphia Phillies, begin a dash to the playoffs…Fresh off his globetrotting adventure, Obama pays a visit to Oahu for a little R&R with the family and gets the full-on stalker treatment from an AP writer who reports on his every move. The image of Obama-as-celebrity begins to emerge fully formed…Russia starts dropping bombs on Georgia, and we wonder if Dubya knows it’s a country as well as a Southern state…As if the layoffs and fat CEO bonus weren’t enough, Beau Ewan reports on ML&P’s promise to preserve land at Honolua Bay and how it looks an awful lot like a profit-driven power grab…With the primary election right around the corner, questions arise about the voting machines that’ll be tallying the results. Seems the company that makes the machines, Hart InterCivic, was the target of a 2007 lawsuit alleging shady shenanigans. But surely nothing untoward will happen here. This is Maui, the land that corruption doesn’t touch…Forget the conventions, Joe Biden and even Jeremiah Wright—the biggest general election news is John McCain tapping some lady from Alaska to be his VP. We don’t know much about this Sarah Palin, but surely she can’t be as dim as she seems…

SEPTEMBER

I take a very small swing at high fructose corn syrup and get a curt e-mail and a packet of propaganda from the corn syrup lobby. Interesting that they would feel the need to dump so much money into PR, given their claims that their product is awesome and, I’m paraphrasing, possibly a cure for cancer…A Maui developer who wants to open a low-income campground for the homeless in Spreckelsville gets shut down by a coalition of NIMBYs. This is not a nominee for Most Surprising Story of the Year…Speaking of things that aren’t surprising, the primary election happens, and despite valiant efforts by upstart candidates like Summer Starr and Tasha Kama, Maui elects the same collection of developer-friendly good old boys—guys like Joe Souki and Kyle Yamashita who never met a deep-pocketed donor they didn’t like. Oh well, with Obama on the ballot, thing’ll turn out better in November. Right?…

OCTOBER

Remember when I said Sarah Palin couldn’t be as dim as she seems? Well, that was before the Vice Presidential debate. She’s dimmer…The economic situation is officially labeled a crisis; John McCain looks erratic and out of touch while Obama stays cool and presidential. But neither one seems to have much in the way of answers…Speaking of a lack of answers, with the crisis worsening our leaders in Washington go into reactionary panic mode and start dishing out federal cheese willy-nilly. Didn’t see that coming...As his dad continues to coast toward victory, Shane Victorino becomes a postseason hero and the Phillies defeat the Tampa Bay Rays and win the World Series. A thousand Maui photo ops await…After much buildup and debate, Halloween in Lahaina happens without the CRC’s stamp of approval and with little help from the Mayor’s office (the streets are not closed to traffic in an affront to common sense). All that said, fewer people show up, things stay pretty sane and merchants fret that next year the event, once a counted-upon revenue generator, will be dead in the water…

NOVEMBER

That little election that nobody was really talking about happens. The United States elects its first non-Caucasian commander in chief. Obama delivers a stirring speech to a huge crowd in Chicago, and even the unabashedly cynical are forced for a moment to feel a tinge of hope…Speaking of hope, local election returns offer none. Once again, Maui rejects change at home and rubber stamps the same group of councilmembers and state legislators. Some blame a lack of awareness, citing the number of blank ballots. Ignorance, as usual, is a poor excuse…One of the more intriguing local matchups, the South Maui Council race between Wayne Nishiki and Don Couch, gets a lot more interesting after the election, which Nishiki wins narrowly. Less than two weeks later, we break the story that Nishiki—who ran the independent, no-strings-attached campaign and hammered his opponent for taking contributions from developers—took out a $100,000 loan from Everett Dowling in 2005 and filed a disclosure form more than two months late, in an apparent attempt to keep the loan out of the news…

DECEMBER

The Makena development is back in the headlines, as the council hears testimony pro and con. See if this sounds familiar: people pack the meeting, give passionate pleas, the councilmembers ruminate, then vote in favor of the project. Seriously, we could just skip the whole process and get right to the “Whatever you want, Mr. Dowling” phase, couldn’t we?…Nishiki goes before the Board of Ethics and it seems clear he’ll escape with a slap on the wrist. Now we await his swearing-in and the first time he has to recuse himself from a vote involving Dowling…ML&P announces CEO David Cole will be stepping down at year’s end. But don’t worry (because we know you were), he’ll have a nice multi-million dollar pillow to help soften his landing...Offering a perfect metaphor for his failed presidency, an Iraqi reporter hurls a shoe at George Bush’s head during a press conference. The footwear fails to find its mark, but the point is made…And now, I think we’re all caught up. That’s everything that happened. (Seriously, if you think of something big and important we left off, rest assured—it didn’t happen.) Happy holidays, everyone, and—against all odds and evidence—here’s to a prosperous, peaceful, progressive New Year. MTW

---