It was, as it was a year ago, film noir at last week’s opening of the 2012 state legislative session: No music, no dancing, few flowers, sobriety everywhere. The residents of the so-called “People’s House” were in high re-election-year mode: all business, levity at a minimum. The Senate’s minority of one, East Honolulu Republican Sam [...]
A year before the 2012 presidential election, a generic Republican presidential candidate defeats Hawaii-born Barack Obama in his bid for a second term. According to RealClearPolitics.com, that generic Republican wins by 1.2 percent of the vote. How can that margin be so thin? The country’s unemployment rate froze at 9.1 percent more than a year [...]
I spent 40 years at the University of Hawaii: six at Manoa as a teaching assistant and instructor, 34 at West Oahu in the various professorial ranks. Aside from the time spent in mind-numbing faculty meetings, I loved every minute of it. What wasn’t to love? The university paid me to read history and literature, [...]
A family wedding has preoccupied me the past few weeks, so I’ve fallen behind in keeping my valued readers current on the political news of the day. Let’s start with Mufi Hannemann’s announcement that he will be a candidate for the 2nd District (rural Oahu and the Neighbor Islands) congressional seat being vacated by Mazie [...]
Congressional Republicans recently passed on President Barack Obama’s offer of $4 trillion in cuts in federal spending over the next decade, including changes in expensive entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Why? Because Republicans across the land have signed anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist’s pledge never to vote for a tax increase. From South [...]
Sixteen months separate us from general election day 2012, but political storm clouds stretch from Hawaii to upstate New York. Many of them take the configuration of angry old geezers staring down on politicians gone mad. Consider the case of Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a certified old geezer himself. The newly elected, 72-year-old chief executive, faced [...]
The elections of November 1868 were run under a congressional Civil War reconstruction plan that enabled newly freed former slaves to vote and hold office. Allied with a minority of Southern whites, blacks joined the party of the Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, and the Republican Party took control of legislatures throughout the defeated Confederacy. In [...]
Don’t look now, but Hawaii’s election year 2012 has begun, a full year and half before general election day. Oh, I know, I know. If you’re like me, you are still shaking from election year 2010: The special 1st District congressional election; the Democrats’ hotly contested gubernatorial primary; the multi-candidate races for the remaining two [...]
As a result of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, more than 11,000 bodies have been recovered and the final death toll could exceed 18,000. The physical damage has been so great that I’ve yet to hear anyone venture an estimate of the cost of rebuilding, or a timeline. Fortunately, Hawaii’s losses to the tsunami [...]
When I last talked to House Finance chairman Marcus Oshiro about a biennium budget it was 2008. Republican Linda Lingle was governor and Oshiro was in a very bad mood. “I admit it,” he says, “I was mean, nasty and short – all doom and gloom.” He had reason to be disagreeable. The nation’s Great [...]
