A game of chicken

January 28, 2023

In old movies, hot-rodders race straight toward each other in a test of wills known as “playing chicken.” The first driver to swerve from the head-on collision is deemed a “chicken.” That is how the state Department of Education’s refusal to build a grade-separated pedestrian crossing for Kulanihako‘i High School has felt in Kihei. Though they agreed to the requirement set by the Land Use Commission in 2013, the DOE and its partners with the state Department of Transportation Highways Division bet year after year, meeting after meeting, that they could duck that commitment. ...

Caution on rent control

January 27, 2023

Ideas that start on the progressive fringes have a way of becoming government policy these days, as President Joe Biden’s $400 billion student loan cancellation shows. Lo, Democrats in Congress are now pressing the president to impose rent control nationwide. The White House is considering a series of executive actions that are ostensibly intended to protect tenants. Rents on average increased 17.6 percent in 2021 and another 3.8 percent last year. One culprit was near-zero interest rates while they lasted, which inflated housing prices and made it harder for young people to buy a ...

Gas-stove culture war

January 24, 2023

Who could have predicted that kitchen stoves would become the latest tinderbox in the nation’s culture wars? But that’s what happened in recent days as Republicans flew off the handle over comments by Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, who said the agency was looking at regulating gas stoves and could even ban them because they are a health hazard. GOP politicians seized on the remarks, accusing President Biden and the Democrats of trying to take away people’s gas stoves. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz declared they’d have to “pry” his ...

Who benefits from gambling?

January 21, 2023

“Cui bono?” To whose benefit? A proposed sports gaming bill announced last week by Oahu state Rep. John Mizuno has us pondering this ancient saying credited to the Roman statesman, Cicero. Who benefits from opening the door to legalized gambling in Hawaii? Mizuno’s bill proposes to allow the first, single standalone sportsbook and card room on Oahu. It would have a 10-year license and provide local gamblers a closer option for gaming than flying to Las Vegas or elsewhere. Reading Mizuno’s quotes in The Maui News, it seemed the Oahu representative had all his talking points ...

Handling of documents

January 20, 2023

It will be up to the two special counsels to investigate and weigh the handling of secret documents by President Biden and former President Donald Trump. But the current questions should not obscure an enormous problem that has been festering for decades and threatens national security, democracy and accountability: The classification system for managing secrets is overwhelmed and desperately needs repair. Too much national security information is classified, and too little declassified. For years, officials have stamped documents “secret” in a lowest-common denominator system that ...

Brazil riots and Jan. 6

January 17, 2023

The United States has long been a model for the world, inspiring people in other nations to throw off oppression and follow our path by creating stable, solid, democratic societies based on the rule of law, featuring the orderly and peaceful transfer of power. So maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some Brazilians tried to take a lesson from the U.S. on Sunday. It was the wrong lesson. Brazil’s far-right election deniers rioted in the capital city of Brasilia on behalf of defeated ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, trashing that nation’s seat of government and copying the Jan. ...