Thursday, October 25, 2007

 

Who voted for or against the Senate Superferry bill


by Larry Geller

Here's an article on the Senate committee votes today on the Superferry bill in the Advertiser, Superferry bill passes key Senate vote.

The vote is recorded here. I made a convenient summary for you, putting all the "yes" votes together. "Yes with reservations" is a crock in my view in this situation.

Update: I've received emails (and please see the first comment on this post) pointing out that it's necessary to vote WR ("with reservations") in order to be appointed to a conference committee. This is true.

But this leads to a dilemma, unless legislators have a way to let us, the public, know that their final vote will be "no."

What to do?  How about this. I've changed the table below to indicate the WR votes. But those who voted for the bill earn the Dead Whale award for harpooning the court's decision, and those who voted "no" earn the Happy Whale Award.

Hope this is a better approach.

Sen. William Espero gets an extra Harpooned Whale for having appeared on the Advertiser's list of those who accepted campaign contributions related to the Superferry and now voting for the bill.

Sen. Shan Tsutsui gets a special extra Happy Whale for having appeared on the Advertiser's list and yet voting against the bill. 'Way to go. Not that others, particularly Sen. Hooser, don't deserve any number of Happy Whales, but I would like to commemorate this very special vote.

 

Yes:

Espero  

deadwhalesmalldeadwhalesmall   No: English happywhalesmall
 

Gabbard

WR     Hooser happywhalesmall
 

Hee

WR     Kokubun happywhalesmall
 

Ihara

WR     Tsutsui happywhalesmall happywhalesmall
 

Inouye

deadwhalesmall        
 

Nishihara

WR        
 

Menor

WR        
 

Slom

deadwhalesmall        
 

Taniguchi

WR        
 

Trimble

WR        


 



Comments:

Sent this to Joan this morning after watching Maui Planning Commission hearing on Akaku.

Joan, You are in a long term rental cottage on ag land? If you were here on Maui and you had a vacation rental in that cottage you'd be out of business. I'm not in the rental business, but Ag lots are going through a big crackdown all of a sudden. No B&B's no TRV and Min. income from farming are some. It's interesting to see all this ag lot law making in conjunction with HSF. If local farmers are officially denied vacation rental income and must make a certain amount a year to farm, how many will survive? If Maui Land and Pine is planning to ship Maui gold pineapple and other "products" by HSF might they be going into the veggie business in a big way? Are we cleaning out small farmers in the interest of corporate agra business? Have not seen anything written about this coincidental crackdown and HSF...have you? Is this why the farmers were saying HSF too expensive at the hearing yesterday? ML&P has already invested 1mil in HSF and done their own deal with HSF. OK, maybe I'm paranoid but can you blame me after watching the House hearing on my PC yesterday. I wish I could box it up and make it a required part of school civics curriculum. Heck, make it part of a requirement to vote in this state.
And finally, did I hear lots of hints from A.G. Bennett about "fixing 343? Would this be like the current admin and congress "fixed" our federal agencies? Scary!!!
 


In all fairness these are committee hearings, and a no vote in committee means you can't sit on the conference. ENE's Menor and Ihara both have good heads on their shoulders. As for Trimble, well he has good ideas sometimes too. Point is Yes WR is a valid tactic for remaining part of the discussion rather than being chalked up as part of the "no" opposition even in a situation such as this. In fact since this debacle involves shoving hastily written legislation through the presence of WR votes becomes much more important to determine how the final floor vote might fall. I guess I disagree with the assertion that a WR deserves to be viewed in the same light as a yes vote.
 


I do know about the WR being needed to serve on a conference committee. Maybe I shouldn't lump them together.

It's a problem. Normally, bills go forward because legislators keep voting for them. They go from committee to committee, each hoping, perhaps, that the final committee will deal with it.

I'll make a note in the original post to your comment.
 

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Requiring those Captcha codes at least temporarily, in the hopes that it quells the flood of comment spam I've been receiving.





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