I’m putting the blog on hiatus for the remainder of 2011. I have some other things I need to attend to, and the relatively slow news period between elections and legislative sessions seems the right time. I’ll still be writing my Volcanic Ash and flASHback columns in the Star-Advertiser. Thanks so much for reading and participating. If you’d like [...]
Archive for the ‘Volcanic Ash’ category
Time out
September 20, 2011Are UPW talks coming to a head?
September 16, 2011If you think the state’s legal battle with the Hawaii State Teachers Association is intense, wait until negotiations boil over with the United Public Workers, which represents more than 13,000 state and county blue-collar workers. Talks with the UPW have produced little apparent progress since the old “Furlough Friday” contract expired July 1, and while [...]
Once there was dignity
September 15, 2011I’ve spent the last couple of days reliving the past via “The Help,” a moving film about black maids and the white families they served in 1960s Jackson, Miss., and ABC’s documentary “Jacqueline Kennedy: In Her Own Words,” based on interviews the former first lady did with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. a few months after JFK’s [...]
Legislators continue ethics fight
September 14, 2011The Political Radar blog had an interesting item on a letter from legislative leaders asking the attorney general to weigh in on the Ethics Commission’s ruling that members of task forces and working groups formed by the Legislature must follow the same ethics rules on lobbying as members of other state boards and commissions. I’ll [...]
Do my eyes deceive me on Waikiki homeless?
September 13, 2011I made a few trips to Waikiki last week and found the homeless far less visible than my last visit in checks from the Elks Club end of Kapiolani Park through Ala Moana Park. I’ve also noticed fewer homeless in once-popular areas in Kakaako. I’ll take it as a sign that Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s homelessness [...]
HSTA can’t get its affidavits straight
September 9, 2011The Hawaii State Teachers Association has received a stinging rebuke from the Hawaii State Labor Relations Board in its prohibited practices case against the state for implementing its “last, best and final” contract offer. In July, HSTA filed an amended motion for interlocutory relief and tried to strike the state’s declarations of opposition on the [...]
Bunda a curious choice for transit authority
September 8, 2011The plan of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation to appoint former state Sen. Robert Bunda as its final voting member is baffling. Previous appointments to HART by Mayor Peter Carlisle and the City Council were politically connected people with zero experience running a commuter rail system. No personal knock on Bunda, who was a [...]
The political gods smile on Mufi Hannemann
September 7, 2011After the embarrassing drubbing former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann took from Neil Abercrombie in last year’s governor’s race, who would have thought he’d have a chance to climb back into one of the state’s top offices just two years later? But the 2nd Congressional District seat opened by Mazie Hirono’s run for retiring U.S. Sen. [...]
A ‘waha’ state of mind
September 6, 2011My last “serious” column before going on vacation was about Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s tendency to orate over and over about the state’s problems without having new progress to report in solving them. A reader wrote in using a word to describe the governor that I haven’t heard since my days in Hilo High — “waha.” [...]
Gone fishin’
August 21, 2011I’m taking a little time off to spend what’s left of the summer paying attention to things other than the news. See you after Labor Day.
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