Disappeared News

by Larry Geller

Watch this Tesla Motors video. Click the thingy at the lower right for full-screen, it's worth it:

You’d think Hawaii would be the perfect place to test driverless cars. With our ideal year-round climate, engineers could get a solid start. Those places with snow are not likely to get driverless cars early on anyway.

Unfortunately, I doubt any manufacturer would agree, considering how abominably we maintain our roadways. Notice in the video that the streets and parking lot are perfectly painted. Not so in Honolulu, anyway.

Here's an image of a section of the H-1 with long-standing confusing markings left by repair work that was just left as you see it.

I don't need to repeat here all the photos I've posted over the years of disappeared pavement paint on ordinary streets. There are even traffic lights installed above the wrong lanes. Ok, just one photo:

Forget about testing the cars for development. When driverless cars finally become commonplace, Honolulu will be on some sort of blacklist. Instead of being the first to use this technology, we’re more likely to be the last.

Sad.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/29/2016 12:40:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I just stumbled across a book listed on Amazon.com that includes this sentence in its description:

Outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women.

The book could be about today’s political scene, or next year’s, after the presidential election. I thought this must have been recently published, but no.

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order was apparently published in 2003.

I’m not going to read it, I was just fixated on that sentence, written by some reviewer 13 years ago.

It’s not like we don’t know what could happen depending on who is elected.

So please vote.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/27/2016 07:15:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I don’t read the right-leaning columnists in the editorial section, but I diligently read the editorials in the Star-Advertiser. As Honolulu’s major daily news source, they are opinion leaders. So I was disappointed to find this, in today’s endorsement of Republic Gene Ward:

In a Democrat-ridden House, Ward’s opposition to proposals such as vehicle/gas tax increases in face of dubious spending is welcome.

“Democrat-ridden??” Like, “lice-ridden” or “disease-ridden?” It didn’t sound right to me as an editorial statement. I googled the definition to check myself:

“filled with or containing something unpleasant or unwanted”

I didn’t expect to actually see that in print in an editorial.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/27/2016 11:30:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

(an audio link is at the end of this article)

I have to admit that I thought reports of the foreign fisherman who make up most of Hawaii’s longline fishing fleet and are confined to their ships for years, sometimes badly abused—would be just a flash in the pan. I thought the story would have its 15 minutes in the news cycle and then disappear again.

But since the Associated Press revealed conditions in the Hawaii fleet on September 8, articles have ricocheted around the country and around the world.

So what’s happening to correct this deplorable situation? Nothing so far.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources says it has nothing to do with “labor issues.” DLNR is wrong—it is not being asked to deal with labor issues. It is charged with issuing fishing licenses for the purpose of conservation, not labor. DLNR must take the first steps toward correcting its oversight, and so far it has shirked its responsibility.

Homeland Security says it can’t enforce the so-called “universal contract” drawn up by an industry consultant. In truth, no one can enforce it, and it isn’t really a contract. The terms of employment would be part of an employment or recruiting contract.

Bottom line here: so far, no part of government says it can do anything at all about the “slave ships.” All this and plenty of commentary has appeared in the newspaper, on-line and on TV.

And yet, there is still “disappeared news.” What is it? Simple. That Hawaii is breaking laws as it issues fishing licenses to the fishermen, and there are clear steps state government must take to begin to reform the system.

The legislative informational briefing held earlier this week was not only posted with less than 24 hours notice, but it was dominated by industry spokespeople and the government agencies who say they can do nothing about the situation.

By the time attorney Lance Collins was called to testify, after more than two hours and twenty minutes had passed, nearly all the reporters and video cameras had left the room. So his testimony became the “disappeared news.” Yet since he pinpointed the specific laws that the state is violating, his testimony was the only one to provide a pathway to correcting what others are lamenting they cannot cure.

Sure, there would be many changes needed to eliminate the abuses. Instead of floundering around claiming they can do nothing, state agencies need to start from what they are doing wrong and commence making repairs. The petition turned down by the Board of Land and Natural Resources would have begun that process [disclosure: I am one of the signers of the petition].

I recorded the informational briefing from my seat in the peanut gallery and tried to improve the audio quality by post-processing in the computer. Download or listen to the testimony given by attorney Lance Collins by clicking here or right-click and save it to your hard disk.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/22/2016 01:32:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

Sorry for the late post.

Today at 10:30 there will be a rally at the State Capitol on the continuing conditions in the Hawaii long-line fishing fleet. Since the Associated Press exposed the issue on September 8 until the present moment, nothing has changed.

At 11:00 today a legislative briefing is to be held in Room 309. The announcement went out only late Tuesday, but it may be very crowded—if only because of the long list of planned testfiers. See Briefing On Fishing Labor Issues (Civil Beat, 10/18/2016) for the story and a list of invitees.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/19/2016 09:49:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

I haven’t posted on the recent hearing before the Board of Land and Natural Resources on the petition to change the rules for licensing long-line fishermen because I’ve been too busy working on my testimony and then attending the hearing to give it, and on other hot projects. So yes, disclosure, I’m writing about something that I’m personally involved in.

But there’s no question it’s news. In fact, far from “disappeared news,” the story of the Board turning down our petition to revise the rules for fishing licenses has traveled far—it’s making its way internationally today. The story of BLNR’s failure to do anything about the conditions in the Hawaii fishing fleet that were uncovered in AP stories published September 8 has spread farther than all but those original stories.

Here’s a screenshot of the story in the Jakarta Post. Basically the same article appeared on newspaper websites in Pakistan and elsewhere, including newspapers across this country.

Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources spokesman Dan Dennison confirmed the board's denial after its meeting on Friday.

"It was predicted but it's nevertheless disappointing," said petitioner Kathryn Xian, who runs the nonprofit Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery. "The DLNR has really shirked its responsibility in doing an easy fix."

[Daily Times, Pakistan (AP), Hawaii board denies changes in rules for foreign fishermen, 10/16/2016]

The original story, posted by the AP on the night of September 7, also spread far and wide. Here it is, for example: Impoverished Migrants Are Catching Hawaii’s Prized Seafood, Report Finds (Yahoo News, 9/7/2016).

So between September 7 or 8 and today, the Hawaii state government continues to license fishermen who are confined to their ships, in violation of state law—and they haven’t done a thing to fix it. Nothing has changed.

Do the petitioners give up? I don’t think so.

The petition was only one arrow in our quiver.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/16/2016 03:01:00 PM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

by Larry Geller

The U.S. Geological Survey has just released an 11-minute (11:20) video intended as “B-roll” for news media. It’s made up of clips that a TV station, for example, might include in a news story that they produce themselves.

I don’t think I disqualify Disappeared News just because I’m willing to use the word “awesome” in a title or headline—no AP style book is going to convince me that this video is anything less than awesome. And we’re all citizen journalists these days, right? So here’s the video for you.

If you’ve invested your kids’ college fund in a home theater, a 4K resolution of the USGS video is available here. For the rest of us, the YouTube video is here or you can watch it below. Go to either site, however, for information about the clips and to read credits for their production.

Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island is our favorite vacation spot possibly in the whole world. Go there to witness both destruction and creation in a short walk along the Devastation Trail, and of course, to try and see hot lava with your own eyes. Smell the sulfur. Feel the warm ground. Visit the Jaggar Museum. At night, see the Milky Way spread out above while threads of hot lava creep down the mountains toward the sea. Awesome is an understatement.

For now, watch this new video. Part of it shows the scientists at work. You cannot actually see these shots in person.

Do click the little thingy at the lower right to view in full-screen mode, and for a list of the scenes, click one of the links above.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/06/2016 09:25:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post

“
“The intent is to get more cars off the road, to help alleviate the H-1 (and) H-2 merge, and so forth,” [Hawaii Department of Transportation Director Ford] Fuchigami said. “We have to be able to offer different modes of transportation to get people into town, to get cars off the road.”—Star-Advertiser front-page story
”
“
TheBoat, Honolulu's commuter ferry from Kalaeloa to Aloha Tower, gives West O'ahu residents an oceangoing alternative to increasingly clogged highways, for no more than $4 per round- trip ticket.

What makes the service so cheap is that Honolulu taxpayers pay an additional $120 per roundtrip rider to cover the actual costs of operating TheBoat, according to a city study.—Honolulu Advertiser, 2/15/2009
”

by Larry Geller

First, here’s a video of this morning’s H-1 traffic coming into town from the west side this morning to play while you read this article. Just start it up and read on. It has nothing to do with the commuter ferry story, just as the commuter ferry will have nothing to do with H-1 traffic.

Today’s story is interesting in several ways, most of them demonstrating that our Department of Transportation leaders may have a thing or two to learn about transportation. The newspaper, also—it covered the original Superferry so poorly that readers would likely not have known about the poor ride conditions and high cost of operation of the inter-island ferries. Today’s article didn’t mention the running cost of the earlier Oahu ferry.

The inter-island Superferry company ultimately declared bankruptcy, and certainly one contributing factor would have been that it seldom, if ever, make a profit, according to outside estimates at the time. The fuel cost of running those huge engines was likely not recouped from the ferry fares.

Just as our city department of transportation to this day has not said what the cost of running the train will be after it is built (recently: if it is built), the state DOT will have to tell commuters what they will pay and how much it will cost to operate. Why? Because they have tried this before, and it was an expensive fiasco.

TheBoat, Honolulu's commuter ferry from Kalaeloa to Aloha Tower, gives West O'ahu residents an oceangoing alternative to increasingly clogged highways, for no more than $4 per round-trip ticket.

What makes the service so cheap is that Honolulu taxpayers pay an additional $120 per roundtrip rider to cover the actual costs of operating TheBoat, according to a city study.

The cost of carrying each passenger on TheBoat is about 62 times more than the cost of an average trip on TheBus. It is also significantly more expensive than comparable Mainland ferry services.   [Honolulu Advertiser, High subsidies may scuttle Hawaii's ferry, 2/15/2009]

More:

For nearly two years, TheBoat has been a little-used leg of Oahu's TheBus system, three 75-foot double-hulled vessels running six round trips daily, sailing between the Aloha Tower Marketplace and the growing communities of West Oahu.

[Yahoo News, Hawaii's cheapest cruise sails into sunset , 7/2/2009]

TheBoat utilized vessels whose running cost was (or should have been) well known before they were put into service. It should have been easy to get that information: they had been in service elsewhere. Did the DOT ask? If so, Honolulu taxpayers were cheated badly by its mayor and city administration. Did they not even ask? Then I return to my question about competent leadership.

As to the claims about reducing traffic on the H-1, no one has so far refuted my oft-repeated observation that if the number of parking spaces in town, at UH and in Waikiki, remains the same, no cars will be removed from the H-1. If one person decides to commute to town by boat (or train, or even by bus), another car will take that parking place. In town parking places are a profit-making resource. Nor can I see UH tearing down any part of their parking structure. So cars will keep coming on the H-1.

In fact, rampant home construction in central Oahu means potentially adding even more cars. There’s no ferry, no train, that will reduce this.

Finally: So what benefit is left to public transportation in Honolulu? There are at least two benefits:

1)  If done right, it would boost retail and allow businesses to locate along the route. That would require a grade-level system. See the second video in this article. This would mean some local retail and supply-line jobs as well. A grade-level system going all the way to Waianae would create a long, local retail corridor that benefits everyone. Plus restaurants, coffee shops, churches, etc., all taking advantage of convenient grade-level transportation.

2) Public transportation increases the productivity of labor. Workers who are not car owners can be offered lower pay. This is true today.

Ok, done. The video above is still playing, isn’t it? Compare, if you like, after the train and potentially theBoat are running. By that time traffic should be even worse.

Permalink posted by Larry @ 10/03/2016 10:33:00 AM   0 comments - add your comment links to this post