Image above: Banana Republic flag satire. From http://cathiefromcanada.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
By Rolf Bieber on 5 January 2010 in The Garden Isand -
(http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2010/01/05/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc4b42ac0d673e8145450589.txt)
In January of 2009, I promised the people of Kauai as a Board of Ethics (BOE) member to uphold the Charter and hold myself, my colleagues and all officers and employees of the county accountable to the Code of Ethics.
Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho Jr.’s appointment of me to the quasi-judicial body paid dividends to a public hungry for action beyond political rhetoric. I delivered to you what you deserve from a BOE member — integrity, openness and a political will to enforce the law.
In my single year on the BOE, your view into government achieved unprecedented depths by release of four County Attorney opinions and a significant change in policy regarding the county’s disclosure statements and an advisory opinion given to Charter Review Commissioner Mattie Yoshioka that now correctly supports the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D). In response, several county commissioners have chosen to resign their posts. These important works and corresponding news stories can be read in detail in The Garden Island, at www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine and parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com. Yet these significant strides were achieved at a cost.
My cost came in the form of an ousting from the board. Conviction and oath to preserve the Charter soon aligned me against BOE colleagues, mayoral appointees, the Office of Boards and Commissions (OBC), the County Attorney (CA) and apparently Mayor Carvalho himself, who inexplicably refused to reappoint me to the board for a second term.
Perhaps I should have read the writing on the wall my first day.
During Council’s approval interview, Councilman Dickie Chang questioned whether I would be writing letters to the editor of The Garden Island while on the BOE. His suggestion was that I should not. This concept, to muzzle a basic tenet of our Constitution, struck me with insult and my response, received solemnly, addressed my First Amendment Right to free speech-- a right I enjoy liberally. The law says ethics members are only restricted in political campaigning. Not a problem — for me.
Or that the writing was on the wall within weeks of my appointment when I was encouraged at a Charter Review Commission meeting by OBC Administrator John Isobe to seek out a job in the administration, a computer position with the County (I did not). Or that Mr. Isobe would on several other occasions try inappropriately to influence me — once, when I requested public documents that could expose members of the administration and commissions he asked that I not share the documents with anyone, and later calling me to meet in his office “to see how things were going” but to actually express his desire for the BOE to reach a “super-majority or unanimous-vote only for release of County Attorney opinions to the public.”
That writing on the wall should have been clear enough months before as the only piece of advice I received from Interim Mayor Kaipo Asing during my 2008 mayoral campaign when he told me, “Don’t rock the boat.”
Why I refused to comply with these things can be explained simply: because to do so would deny you access to the workings of your government and I swore to uphold the law.
Early as an BOE member I contacted newly appointed County Attorney Al Castillo with documentation received from various sources including the county that I determined clearly showed dealings to oust 20.02 (D) from the Charter and a case to uphold the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” 2008 had already seen contention between an angered public and the BOE regarding 20.02 (D) then again when the voters rejected change to this Charter section that November.
The voters overwhelmingly supported stricter guidelines by voting down a proposal to allow board & commission members ability to represent private interest before other boards and commissions. In other words, the citizenry likes the prohibition as it stands-- I agreed, despite what a colleague said about voter “knee-jerk, over-reaction”. I believe the voters got it right.
If the voters had passed the changes to the law, none of the following would have occurred, yet little did I know at that time my involvement in county government would soon ignite a firestorm.
In April of 2009, Castillo told me he had meetings with Kauai Circuit Court Judge Randal Valenciano on several occasions concerning 20.02 (D) and that it was clear to him that attorneys like Charter Review Commissioner Jonathan Chun (or later, Lorna Nishimitsu) who represented clients for pay before other commissions were indeed in violation, but Castillo drew the line there. This ethics law would not apply to other non-paid individuals he told me. I questioned him about the failed ballot measure in November 2008 that would have relieved “the other non-paid individuals” (county board and commission members) and the potential for quid pro quo amongst county officers/ employees but Castillo failed to convince me even then, long before our public conflicts stemming from three ethics complaints I’d file later in May 2009 against BOE Vice-Chairman Mark Hubbard and Judith Lenthall and Cost Control Commissioner Lorna Nishimitsu for violation of 20.02 (D).
Castillo for the first time referred to an obscure 1976 Michael Belles document to help make his case, that, upon investigation, mistakenly declared that the “county code interprets the Charter.” No. The code can only supplement, it in no way interprets, yet Castillo would sell this concept like his predecessor to a majority of BOE members with past mistakes to protect.
To counter this I challenged the BOE to examine supremacy laws.
At the time of my first approaching Castillo, the possibilities for positive change in the county were real, many folks who paid attention to such things were hopeful after long years of dismal results and secrecy from prior County Attorneys. BOE attorney Margaret Sueoka, fired by Castillo and replaced by Mona Clark and Mauna Kea Trask, filed suit against the county. Nobody complained of Sueoka’s absence. But, the fact that many of the old-guard remained under Carvalho, like Lani Nakazawa, should have clued us into the fact that nothing significant would change in the CA’s office. Yes, we would see some new faces, but...
Now, in retrospect, Castillo made things worse for the BOE than his predecessor. Not only would he scam you with old-school tact like recycling an old opinion into a “new” one with the same confusing outcome, but he’d bully you, too, like telling you that you must comply with his opinion or risk personal liability. This was not your grandfather’s CA — or maybe it was.
What’s most confounding to me is the vast confusion and conflicting opinions coming out of Castillo’s office concerning those 21 plain words in 20.02 (D). Castillo reversed himself from our April discussion and it appeared to me he was making a bid to wipe the books clean of 20.02(D).
All three attorneys that served BOE in 2009: Mona Clark, Mauna Kea Trask and Castillo did an unconvincing job cajoling the board with outlandish arguments, for example “this is the way our county has done things for decades” and “perhaps that sort of thinking applies on the mainland”-- insults of intelligence even to the dullest mind in an argument against upholding plain law to protect a handful of politically privileged associates, campaign supporters and a majority board membership mired in past mistakes. Worse, out of the newly interchangeable-counsel-triplet, supported by the majority BOE membership came a spinning of such fantasy yarn as to confuse plain meaning and basic supremacy law: Castillo and Trask particularly embraced aforementioned “county code interpreting the Charter”, “Charter cannot be read in a vacuum” bizarre scenarios conjuring “a chilling effect” on the county that “upholding 20.02 (D) would create ‘absurd results’ which would keep county officers and employees from applying for building permits, driver’s licenses and camping passes”-- all this obscure nonsense in the face of actual, legitimate complaints against three county officers violating a clear prohibition in the Code of Ethics.
The public, outraged and dumbfounded, quickly identified Castillo’s dirty tricks and doubletalk and The Garden Island newspaper among other outlets reported it frequently. I was pleased to fight Castillo’s rubbish all the way, but it cost me.
After an unceremoniously dumping in December 2009, I asked the mayor what I was supposed to do as a sworn BOE officer when witnessing at Council Budget Hearings and a Budget Committee three county officers violating Charter 20.02 (D). Was I supposed to do ‘what has been done for decades’ by turning a blind eye?
I told the mayor, I couldn’t do it.
Disappointingly, he responded woodenly. A puppet’s recital: “…my commissioners need to work together as a team… I am looking for balance… it’s not about me… you shouldn’t take this personal.” It reminded me of a short, unsatisfying conversation I had with Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro a year earlier-- he too was not smitten with the concept of a democratic process with its pesky checks and balances negotiated through a practice of conflicting ideology as though we must all conform to the wishes of the plantation master.
I insisted on clarification from the mayor but he refused to delve into the subject further and repeated his script, “… as a team… balance… it’s not personal…”
The Carvalho Regime: Together We Can’t.
Worse still, by June’s ethics meeting Castillo went beyond the fold by telling us that although the BOE is the client we “must” follow his advice. Thankfully, member Paul Weil, an extremely skillful attorney, did not allow this abuse, but somehow to my dismay Paul did manage to let Nishimitsu off the hook — in his words-- a regrettable error. That portion of the June meeting which Hubbard, Lenthall nor I could participate, a confounding deal was struck by the four-member BOE quorum and Castillo: all three respondents to the May complaints would be found not guilty of violating 20.02 (D) based on a future county attorney opinion. That’s right. As soon as the board “received” an opinion from the CA, the charges would be dropped.
But thanks again to Paul Weil it was not as easy as the status-quo desired. Weil filleted the work product of Castillo & Co. plastering it with the now notorious “fatally flawed” label eventually hashing-out details with Castillo at Weil’s home-- forging compromise. I respected Weil very much for this move. Not only did he make the extra effort for everyone, but he did it with the best of intentions at a time when was torn apart. Weil seemed optimistic. When Castillo agreed and worked to a deal then backed-out by the following ethics meeting leaving Weil to see Castillo’s true colors— the attorneys parted in canyon-sized proportions. Weil, not to be played like a sucker, exposed Castillo and Trask, by releasing his e-mail communications publicly, understandably, in the name of good governance and transparency (www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine).
During these months of unprecedented openness, confusion and in-fighting within the BOE, I began requesting digital audio minutes from the OBC for the ethics meeting open sessions. The summary minutes supplied by staff approved by the board and posted to the Internet paled in comparison to the actual dialog of these hotly contested meetings. The atmosphere at ethics became critically charged and I wanted the verbatim record preserved, especially since the law was being perverted in a very concerted effort between status-quo board members, the CA, and OBC. By this point in time I felt fully alienated by my government chums, Mr. Isobe no longer smiled in passing, Castillo made no eye contact with me at Council meetings and many of my ethics mates resented me for challenging them. BOE meetings became longer and more heated and Chair Leila Fuller who sat to my right grumbled ever more frequently under her breath and became unsympathetic and sometimes mean-spirited toward public testimony.
Even my requests for audio were met with increasingly deflated responses, and worse, “If you keep this up I don’t know if we can be friends any longer.” the secretary addressed me. A joke, yes, but the message was clear:
Bieber’s rocking the boat — it’s unwelcomed and he must pay.
One way of making me pay was to intimidate me by rallying an “investigation”. This investigation, predicated on an inquiry by Vice Chair Hubbard as to how his name and the names of Judith Lenthall and Lorna Nishimitsu got into the newspaper over ethics complaints never unfurled but remained a dark and misty cloud on the ever growing list of executive sessions. In a weird turn of events, a copy of the board’s executive session minutes concerning the investigation turned up in my subsequent BOE package so I read all about what our discombobulated board was up to — again, Isobe was at the forefront ready to assist the investigation with any and all resources available from the OBC, all too zealously the minutes read.
Crazier still was Hubbard’s and Lenthall’s lame attempt at espionage when during our recusal of the June meeting they attempted a ridiculous display of “good-cop/ bad-cop” to get me to answer questions concerning complaints and names getting into The Garden Island. Lenthall did an especially bad job hiding the fact that she was holding her Black Berry device too close to my mouth.
The pinnacle of insanity surrounded the October 2009 BOE meeting. It wasn’t enough that the board meetings were now regularly fraught with ridiculous numbers of executive sessions with never enough votes to get into and unclear as to who should participate and who should recuse themselves for conflicts-of-interest or that now the county disclosure statements were examined by the board in open session — a concept unheard of in the history of Kauai County. Or that nobody really understood how the BOE was going to circumvent responsibility of upholding the law concerning the three complaints filed by now five months earlier.
No, what happened next was a new journey down another rabbit hole replete in recognition.
October 2009, Deputy CA Mona Clark said in open session that “private interest: is defined as anything other than a government entity.” This definition was refused all year in not one, but two new county attorney opinions given the board in prior months of 2009, subsequently challenged by the BOE, particularly Weil, and released to the public. The definition of private interest that sprang forth out of the blue like a sunbeam that morning had been denied long before the May complaints that kept the board in fog was now batted about in open session deliberation between board members as if a beach ball. When Clark defined private interest I could not believe my ears — literally, “private interest— a non-government entity”. But my joy would soon be countered by Weil. Ironically, this is the one definition where the county attorney got it correct and Weil got it wrong. This definition would set the table not only for future interpretations of 20.02 (D) but what the board currently faces in complaints still pending (for example, Vice- Chair Hubbard as respondent for representing a “private interest” 501(c) 3 before Council). In a further perverse twist, eventually, Lenthall and Hubbard agreed!
Later, I requested the audio just like I had done each month prior wanting to hear those words again, “private interest — a non-government entity” in full audio but to my shock and horror my request had been denied from the OBC. They said the digital audio was not available due to a “flash drive error — no audio”. This meant the entire verbatim record was lost. A question crashed through me immediately: was this done intentionally because of Clark’s words?
Shock and horror turned to disgust and suspicion when the following County Council meeting had on its agenda a request from Isobe to destroy audio records. My God, what is going on?
In response to this news I wrote letters to the CA and Council to deny request to destroy any audio records from the BOE because they needed to be preserved in case of any litigation, especially regarding the board’s dealing with 20.02 (D). I found the coincidence between my denial of the October audio and this Council request uncanny. How could this be a mere coincidence? To me it wasn’t coincidence and felt I needed to confront yet again those whom I shared the public trust. Was this a cover-up? A friend asked me how I thought I could get any kind of support from the CA and Council after all the public scrutiny. Why not just talk to Isobe about the records yourself?
By this time I had lost trust in the OBC Administrator. Certainly the feeling was mutual. Since I came on board, no longer was Isobe able to coerce BOE members into protecting CA work product with a super-majority or unanimous vote, or keep disclosure statements secret, or protect political allies like Mattie Yoshioka with favorable advisory opinions vis-à-vis Jonathan Chun a year earlier. O’ the difference a year makes. For Isobe, maintaining a stranglehold on appointees — his kuleana beginning in 2006 under Baptiste was beginning to slip in serious ways.
The more I examined this dynamic, the clearer the idea became-- Isobe’s loss is your gain. Or in the case of these records our loss was his gain, so I imagined. For better or worse, I was not going to let BOE records get destroyed without a fight, even if it meant another costly challenge to yet another pillar in the Carvalho regime.
When the agenda item finally came to the floor of Council, a strange thing happened. A letter from the administration suddenly appeared signed by Isobe and Mayor Carvalho wishing to withdraw the agenda item. I was relieved. The records would be saved. But I felt the Council deserved some explanation as to what was happening behind the scenes. After calling for recess, Chairman Asing asked for public testimony. I approached the microphone, introduced myself and disclosed my membership in the BOE.
At this point something terribly surprising happened and if I had anticipated it I would have handled it differently, but I didn’t. I had no clue that CA Castillo would cut off my testimony before it started. As soon as I introduced myself, Castillo responded with authority. He stated that I would be in violation of the charter and code if I continued testimony. Time froze. I watched in awe as Castillo grinded this testimony to a halt. I looked at the Council, back to Castillo and then back again — Council sat silently and obediently and as still as I did. Castillo, who has no authority in this situation, boldly challenged me and the Council — gambled, and won, initially anyway. It is the Chairman’s prerogative on how to handle public testimony, not the CA. If the Chairman has a question as to the opinion of law concerning testimony he would then ask the testifier to wait a moment while getting legal advice from the attorney. The CA would then offer advice to which the Chairman would respond in conducting the business of testimony. If a testifier chooses, even knowingly, to condemn himself or violate the law he has every right to do so. But the CA may not keep anyone from testimony. It is a violation of one’s First Amendment Right of free speech.
Had I anticipated this move by Castillo, I would have put him on the spot and asked what law was being violated by testifying before Council. But I didn’t. In my inexperience I backed away and I’ll never forget it and always regret not challenging him on the spot.
Fortunately for all of us, Michael Levine of The Garden Island did put Castillo on the spot and asked what law I would have violated. Castillo’s answer: 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” And thankfully, for the public record, Levine printed it.
More importantly, it exposed Castillo as a bad attorney or a political fraud. And if you think there was no political gamesmanship being played there by Castillo considers this: why didn’t Castillo stop Charter Review Commission Chairman Sherman Sheraishi from testifying in favor of the Charter Review Commission appointees at the County Council meeting only weeks later in December 2009?
Because Bieber must pay.
None of the progress in ethics could have been successful without keen journalism and those already participating in our special brand of “democracy”— those willing to chance ridicule, or worse, to point out our government’s faults and needs for improvement. Attention to detail by Michael Levine, Nathan Eagle at The Garden Island and super-heavyweight political reporter Andy Parx at PNN as well as other media outlets have supplied the oft needed exposure the people require and the government deserves. And I would be remiss not to mention the public’s outcry for justice in testimony and the many letters to the editor during the year. Charter champion Horace Stoessel; Attorney and columnist Walter Lewis; Bruce “No-red-tape” Pleas; Government watchdogs like Glenn Mickens, Ken Taylor, Rob Abrew, Caren Diamond and many, more have as much to do with recent breakthroughs in government transparency as I do. Yet, current political movements for change are not nearly enough to take us into 2010 and beyond. This government desperately needs more public involvement.
And bravery is required more consistently from the county rank-in-file to the protester on the streets; from reporters and editors of news pages and blogs to a public willing to write letters and give testimony in commissions and Council meetings. Courageous effort is needed from those who strive to sacrifice for honor and dignity and oath to serve the best interest of the most Kauaians. Remember, my brother and sister citizens, like the mayor says, “It’s not personal.” But I say it’s okay to make it so.
Who of you is willing to pay the price for a better government?
Together We Can’t
SUBHEAD: Year of conflicting ethics in County of Kauai that is operated like a " Banana Republic".
Image above: Banana Republic flag satire. From http://cathiefromcanada.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
By Rolf Bieber on 5 January 2010 in The Garden Isand -
(http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2010/01/05/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc4b42ac0d673e8145450589.txt)
In January of 2009, I promised the people of Kauai as a Board of Ethics (BOE) member to uphold the Charter and hold myself, my colleagues and all officers and employees of the county accountable to the Code of Ethics.
Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho Jr.’s appointment of me to the quasi-judicial body paid dividends to a public hungry for action beyond political rhetoric. I delivered to you what you deserve from a BOE member — integrity, openness and a political will to enforce the law.
In my single year on the BOE, your view into government achieved unprecedented depths by release of four County Attorney opinions and a significant change in policy regarding the county’s disclosure statements and an advisory opinion given to Charter Review Commissioner Mattie Yoshioka that now correctly supports the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D). In response, several county commissioners have chosen to resign their posts. These important works and corresponding news stories can be read in detail in The Garden Island, at www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine and parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com. Yet these significant strides were achieved at a cost.
My cost came in the form of an ousting from the board. Conviction and oath to preserve the Charter soon aligned me against BOE colleagues, mayoral appointees, the Office of Boards and Commissions (OBC), the County Attorney (CA) and apparently Mayor Carvalho himself, who inexplicably refused to reappoint me to the board for a second term.
Perhaps I should have read the writing on the wall my first day.
During Council’s approval interview, Councilman Dickie Chang questioned whether I would be writing letters to the editor of The Garden Island while on the BOE. His suggestion was that I should not. This concept, to muzzle a basic tenet of our Constitution, struck me with insult and my response, received solemnly, addressed my First Amendment Right to free speech-- a right I enjoy liberally. The law says ethics members are only restricted in political campaigning. Not a problem — for me.
Or that the writing was on the wall within weeks of my appointment when I was encouraged at a Charter Review Commission meeting by OBC Administrator John Isobe to seek out a job in the administration, a computer position with the County (I did not). Or that Mr. Isobe would on several other occasions try inappropriately to influence me — once, when I requested public documents that could expose members of the administration and commissions he asked that I not share the documents with anyone, and later calling me to meet in his office “to see how things were going” but to actually express his desire for the BOE to reach a “super-majority or unanimous-vote only for release of County Attorney opinions to the public.”
That writing on the wall should have been clear enough months before as the only piece of advice I received from Interim Mayor Kaipo Asing during my 2008 mayoral campaign when he told me, “Don’t rock the boat.”
Why I refused to comply with these things can be explained simply: because to do so would deny you access to the workings of your government and I swore to uphold the law.
Early as an BOE member I contacted newly appointed County Attorney Al Castillo with documentation received from various sources including the county that I determined clearly showed dealings to oust 20.02 (D) from the Charter and a case to uphold the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” 2008 had already seen contention between an angered public and the BOE regarding 20.02 (D) then again when the voters rejected change to this Charter section that November.
The voters overwhelmingly supported stricter guidelines by voting down a proposal to allow board & commission members ability to represent private interest before other boards and commissions. In other words, the citizenry likes the prohibition as it stands-- I agreed, despite what a colleague said about voter “knee-jerk, over-reaction”. I believe the voters got it right.
If the voters had passed the changes to the law, none of the following would have occurred, yet little did I know at that time my involvement in county government would soon ignite a firestorm.
In April of 2009, Castillo told me he had meetings with Kauai Circuit Court Judge Randal Valenciano on several occasions concerning 20.02 (D) and that it was clear to him that attorneys like Charter Review Commissioner Jonathan Chun (or later, Lorna Nishimitsu) who represented clients for pay before other commissions were indeed in violation, but Castillo drew the line there. This ethics law would not apply to other non-paid individuals he told me. I questioned him about the failed ballot measure in November 2008 that would have relieved “the other non-paid individuals” (county board and commission members) and the potential for quid pro quo amongst county officers/ employees but Castillo failed to convince me even then, long before our public conflicts stemming from three ethics complaints I’d file later in May 2009 against BOE Vice-Chairman Mark Hubbard and Judith Lenthall and Cost Control Commissioner Lorna Nishimitsu for violation of 20.02 (D).
Castillo for the first time referred to an obscure 1976 Michael Belles document to help make his case, that, upon investigation, mistakenly declared that the “county code interprets the Charter.” No. The code can only supplement, it in no way interprets, yet Castillo would sell this concept like his predecessor to a majority of BOE members with past mistakes to protect.
To counter this I challenged the BOE to examine supremacy laws.
At the time of my first approaching Castillo, the possibilities for positive change in the county were real, many folks who paid attention to such things were hopeful after long years of dismal results and secrecy from prior County Attorneys. BOE attorney Margaret Sueoka, fired by Castillo and replaced by Mona Clark and Mauna Kea Trask, filed suit against the county. Nobody complained of Sueoka’s absence. But, the fact that many of the old-guard remained under Carvalho, like Lani Nakazawa, should have clued us into the fact that nothing significant would change in the CA’s office. Yes, we would see some new faces, but...
Now, in retrospect, Castillo made things worse for the BOE than his predecessor. Not only would he scam you with old-school tact like recycling an old opinion into a “new” one with the same confusing outcome, but he’d bully you, too, like telling you that you must comply with his opinion or risk personal liability. This was not your grandfather’s CA — or maybe it was.
What’s most confounding to me is the vast confusion and conflicting opinions coming out of Castillo’s office concerning those 21 plain words in 20.02 (D). Castillo reversed himself from our April discussion and it appeared to me he was making a bid to wipe the books clean of 20.02(D).
All three attorneys that served BOE in 2009: Mona Clark, Mauna Kea Trask and Castillo did an unconvincing job cajoling the board with outlandish arguments, for example “this is the way our county has done things for decades” and “perhaps that sort of thinking applies on the mainland”-- insults of intelligence even to the dullest mind in an argument against upholding plain law to protect a handful of politically privileged associates, campaign supporters and a majority board membership mired in past mistakes. Worse, out of the newly interchangeable-counsel-triplet, supported by the majority BOE membership came a spinning of such fantasy yarn as to confuse plain meaning and basic supremacy law: Castillo and Trask particularly embraced aforementioned “county code interpreting the Charter”, “Charter cannot be read in a vacuum” bizarre scenarios conjuring “a chilling effect” on the county that “upholding 20.02 (D) would create ‘absurd results’ which would keep county officers and employees from applying for building permits, driver’s licenses and camping passes”-- all this obscure nonsense in the face of actual, legitimate complaints against three county officers violating a clear prohibition in the Code of Ethics.
The public, outraged and dumbfounded, quickly identified Castillo’s dirty tricks and doubletalk and The Garden Island newspaper among other outlets reported it frequently. I was pleased to fight Castillo’s rubbish all the way, but it cost me.
After an unceremoniously dumping in December 2009, I asked the mayor what I was supposed to do as a sworn BOE officer when witnessing at Council Budget Hearings and a Budget Committee three county officers violating Charter 20.02 (D). Was I supposed to do ‘what has been done for decades’ by turning a blind eye?
I told the mayor, I couldn’t do it.
Disappointingly, he responded woodenly. A puppet’s recital: “…my commissioners need to work together as a team… I am looking for balance… it’s not about me… you shouldn’t take this personal.” It reminded me of a short, unsatisfying conversation I had with Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro a year earlier-- he too was not smitten with the concept of a democratic process with its pesky checks and balances negotiated through a practice of conflicting ideology as though we must all conform to the wishes of the plantation master.
I insisted on clarification from the mayor but he refused to delve into the subject further and repeated his script, “… as a team… balance… it’s not personal…”
The Carvalho Regime: Together We Can’t.
Worse still, by June’s ethics meeting Castillo went beyond the fold by telling us that although the BOE is the client we “must” follow his advice. Thankfully, member Paul Weil, an extremely skillful attorney, did not allow this abuse, but somehow to my dismay Paul did manage to let Nishimitsu off the hook — in his words-- a regrettable error. That portion of the June meeting which Hubbard, Lenthall nor I could participate, a confounding deal was struck by the four-member BOE quorum and Castillo: all three respondents to the May complaints would be found not guilty of violating 20.02 (D) based on a future county attorney opinion. That’s right. As soon as the board “received” an opinion from the CA, the charges would be dropped.
But thanks again to Paul Weil it was not as easy as the status-quo desired. Weil filleted the work product of Castillo & Co. plastering it with the now notorious “fatally flawed” label eventually hashing-out details with Castillo at Weil’s home-- forging compromise. I respected Weil very much for this move. Not only did he make the extra effort for everyone, but he did it with the best of intentions at a time when was torn apart. Weil seemed optimistic. When Castillo agreed and worked to a deal then backed-out by the following ethics meeting leaving Weil to see Castillo’s true colors— the attorneys parted in canyon-sized proportions. Weil, not to be played like a sucker, exposed Castillo and Trask, by releasing his e-mail communications publicly, understandably, in the name of good governance and transparency (www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine).
During these months of unprecedented openness, confusion and in-fighting within the BOE, I began requesting digital audio minutes from the OBC for the ethics meeting open sessions. The summary minutes supplied by staff approved by the board and posted to the Internet paled in comparison to the actual dialog of these hotly contested meetings. The atmosphere at ethics became critically charged and I wanted the verbatim record preserved, especially since the law was being perverted in a very concerted effort between status-quo board members, the CA, and OBC. By this point in time I felt fully alienated by my government chums, Mr. Isobe no longer smiled in passing, Castillo made no eye contact with me at Council meetings and many of my ethics mates resented me for challenging them. BOE meetings became longer and more heated and Chair Leila Fuller who sat to my right grumbled ever more frequently under her breath and became unsympathetic and sometimes mean-spirited toward public testimony.
Even my requests for audio were met with increasingly deflated responses, and worse, “If you keep this up I don’t know if we can be friends any longer.” the secretary addressed me. A joke, yes, but the message was clear:
Bieber’s rocking the boat — it’s unwelcomed and he must pay.
One way of making me pay was to intimidate me by rallying an “investigation”. This investigation, predicated on an inquiry by Vice Chair Hubbard as to how his name and the names of Judith Lenthall and Lorna Nishimitsu got into the newspaper over ethics complaints never unfurled but remained a dark and misty cloud on the ever growing list of executive sessions. In a weird turn of events, a copy of the board’s executive session minutes concerning the investigation turned up in my subsequent BOE package so I read all about what our discombobulated board was up to — again, Isobe was at the forefront ready to assist the investigation with any and all resources available from the OBC, all too zealously the minutes read.
Crazier still was Hubbard’s and Lenthall’s lame attempt at espionage when during our recusal of the June meeting they attempted a ridiculous display of “good-cop/ bad-cop” to get me to answer questions concerning complaints and names getting into The Garden Island. Lenthall did an especially bad job hiding the fact that she was holding her Black Berry device too close to my mouth.
The pinnacle of insanity surrounded the October 2009 BOE meeting. It wasn’t enough that the board meetings were now regularly fraught with ridiculous numbers of executive sessions with never enough votes to get into and unclear as to who should participate and who should recuse themselves for conflicts-of-interest or that now the county disclosure statements were examined by the board in open session — a concept unheard of in the history of Kauai County. Or that nobody really understood how the BOE was going to circumvent responsibility of upholding the law concerning the three complaints filed by now five months earlier.
No, what happened next was a new journey down another rabbit hole replete in recognition.
October 2009, Deputy CA Mona Clark said in open session that “private interest: is defined as anything other than a government entity.” This definition was refused all year in not one, but two new county attorney opinions given the board in prior months of 2009, subsequently challenged by the BOE, particularly Weil, and released to the public. The definition of private interest that sprang forth out of the blue like a sunbeam that morning had been denied long before the May complaints that kept the board in fog was now batted about in open session deliberation between board members as if a beach ball. When Clark defined private interest I could not believe my ears — literally, “private interest— a non-government entity”. But my joy would soon be countered by Weil. Ironically, this is the one definition where the county attorney got it correct and Weil got it wrong. This definition would set the table not only for future interpretations of 20.02 (D) but what the board currently faces in complaints still pending (for example, Vice- Chair Hubbard as respondent for representing a “private interest” 501(c) 3 before Council). In a further perverse twist, eventually, Lenthall and Hubbard agreed!
Later, I requested the audio just like I had done each month prior wanting to hear those words again, “private interest — a non-government entity” in full audio but to my shock and horror my request had been denied from the OBC. They said the digital audio was not available due to a “flash drive error — no audio”. This meant the entire verbatim record was lost. A question crashed through me immediately: was this done intentionally because of Clark’s words?
Shock and horror turned to disgust and suspicion when the following County Council meeting had on its agenda a request from Isobe to destroy audio records. My God, what is going on?
In response to this news I wrote letters to the CA and Council to deny request to destroy any audio records from the BOE because they needed to be preserved in case of any litigation, especially regarding the board’s dealing with 20.02 (D). I found the coincidence between my denial of the October audio and this Council request uncanny. How could this be a mere coincidence? To me it wasn’t coincidence and felt I needed to confront yet again those whom I shared the public trust. Was this a cover-up? A friend asked me how I thought I could get any kind of support from the CA and Council after all the public scrutiny. Why not just talk to Isobe about the records yourself?
By this time I had lost trust in the OBC Administrator. Certainly the feeling was mutual. Since I came on board, no longer was Isobe able to coerce BOE members into protecting CA work product with a super-majority or unanimous vote, or keep disclosure statements secret, or protect political allies like Mattie Yoshioka with favorable advisory opinions vis-à-vis Jonathan Chun a year earlier. O’ the difference a year makes. For Isobe, maintaining a stranglehold on appointees — his kuleana beginning in 2006 under Baptiste was beginning to slip in serious ways.
The more I examined this dynamic, the clearer the idea became-- Isobe’s loss is your gain. Or in the case of these records our loss was his gain, so I imagined. For better or worse, I was not going to let BOE records get destroyed without a fight, even if it meant another costly challenge to yet another pillar in the Carvalho regime.
When the agenda item finally came to the floor of Council, a strange thing happened. A letter from the administration suddenly appeared signed by Isobe and Mayor Carvalho wishing to withdraw the agenda item. I was relieved. The records would be saved. But I felt the Council deserved some explanation as to what was happening behind the scenes. After calling for recess, Chairman Asing asked for public testimony. I approached the microphone, introduced myself and disclosed my membership in the BOE.
At this point something terribly surprising happened and if I had anticipated it I would have handled it differently, but I didn’t. I had no clue that CA Castillo would cut off my testimony before it started. As soon as I introduced myself, Castillo responded with authority. He stated that I would be in violation of the charter and code if I continued testimony. Time froze. I watched in awe as Castillo grinded this testimony to a halt. I looked at the Council, back to Castillo and then back again — Council sat silently and obediently and as still as I did. Castillo, who has no authority in this situation, boldly challenged me and the Council — gambled, and won, initially anyway. It is the Chairman’s prerogative on how to handle public testimony, not the CA. If the Chairman has a question as to the opinion of law concerning testimony he would then ask the testifier to wait a moment while getting legal advice from the attorney. The CA would then offer advice to which the Chairman would respond in conducting the business of testimony. If a testifier chooses, even knowingly, to condemn himself or violate the law he has every right to do so. But the CA may not keep anyone from testimony. It is a violation of one’s First Amendment Right of free speech.
Had I anticipated this move by Castillo, I would have put him on the spot and asked what law was being violated by testifying before Council. But I didn’t. In my inexperience I backed away and I’ll never forget it and always regret not challenging him on the spot.
Fortunately for all of us, Michael Levine of The Garden Island did put Castillo on the spot and asked what law I would have violated. Castillo’s answer: 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” And thankfully, for the public record, Levine printed it.
More importantly, it exposed Castillo as a bad attorney or a political fraud. And if you think there was no political gamesmanship being played there by Castillo considers this: why didn’t Castillo stop Charter Review Commission Chairman Sherman Sheraishi from testifying in favor of the Charter Review Commission appointees at the County Council meeting only weeks later in December 2009?
Because Bieber must pay.
None of the progress in ethics could have been successful without keen journalism and those already participating in our special brand of “democracy”— those willing to chance ridicule, or worse, to point out our government’s faults and needs for improvement. Attention to detail by Michael Levine, Nathan Eagle at The Garden Island and super-heavyweight political reporter Andy Parx at PNN as well as other media outlets have supplied the oft needed exposure the people require and the government deserves. And I would be remiss not to mention the public’s outcry for justice in testimony and the many letters to the editor during the year. Charter champion Horace Stoessel; Attorney and columnist Walter Lewis; Bruce “No-red-tape” Pleas; Government watchdogs like Glenn Mickens, Ken Taylor, Rob Abrew, Caren Diamond and many, more have as much to do with recent breakthroughs in government transparency as I do. Yet, current political movements for change are not nearly enough to take us into 2010 and beyond. This government desperately needs more public involvement.
And bravery is required more consistently from the county rank-in-file to the protester on the streets; from reporters and editors of news pages and blogs to a public willing to write letters and give testimony in commissions and Council meetings. Courageous effort is needed from those who strive to sacrifice for honor and dignity and oath to serve the best interest of the most Kauaians. Remember, my brother and sister citizens, like the mayor says, “It’s not personal.” But I say it’s okay to make it so.
Who of you is willing to pay the price for a better government?
Image above: Banana Republic flag satire. From http://cathiefromcanada.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_archive.html
By Rolf Bieber on 5 January 2010 in The Garden Isand -
(http://www.kauaiworld.com/articles/2010/01/05/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc4b42ac0d673e8145450589.txt)
In January of 2009, I promised the people of Kauai as a Board of Ethics (BOE) member to uphold the Charter and hold myself, my colleagues and all officers and employees of the county accountable to the Code of Ethics.
Mayor Bernard P. Carvalho Jr.’s appointment of me to the quasi-judicial body paid dividends to a public hungry for action beyond political rhetoric. I delivered to you what you deserve from a BOE member — integrity, openness and a political will to enforce the law.
In my single year on the BOE, your view into government achieved unprecedented depths by release of four County Attorney opinions and a significant change in policy regarding the county’s disclosure statements and an advisory opinion given to Charter Review Commissioner Mattie Yoshioka that now correctly supports the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D). In response, several county commissioners have chosen to resign their posts. These important works and corresponding news stories can be read in detail in The Garden Island, at www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine and parxnewsdaily.blogspot.com. Yet these significant strides were achieved at a cost.
My cost came in the form of an ousting from the board. Conviction and oath to preserve the Charter soon aligned me against BOE colleagues, mayoral appointees, the Office of Boards and Commissions (OBC), the County Attorney (CA) and apparently Mayor Carvalho himself, who inexplicably refused to reappoint me to the board for a second term.
Perhaps I should have read the writing on the wall my first day.
During Council’s approval interview, Councilman Dickie Chang questioned whether I would be writing letters to the editor of The Garden Island while on the BOE. His suggestion was that I should not. This concept, to muzzle a basic tenet of our Constitution, struck me with insult and my response, received solemnly, addressed my First Amendment Right to free speech-- a right I enjoy liberally. The law says ethics members are only restricted in political campaigning. Not a problem — for me.
Or that the writing was on the wall within weeks of my appointment when I was encouraged at a Charter Review Commission meeting by OBC Administrator John Isobe to seek out a job in the administration, a computer position with the County (I did not). Or that Mr. Isobe would on several other occasions try inappropriately to influence me — once, when I requested public documents that could expose members of the administration and commissions he asked that I not share the documents with anyone, and later calling me to meet in his office “to see how things were going” but to actually express his desire for the BOE to reach a “super-majority or unanimous-vote only for release of County Attorney opinions to the public.”
That writing on the wall should have been clear enough months before as the only piece of advice I received from Interim Mayor Kaipo Asing during my 2008 mayoral campaign when he told me, “Don’t rock the boat.”
Why I refused to comply with these things can be explained simply: because to do so would deny you access to the workings of your government and I swore to uphold the law.
Early as an BOE member I contacted newly appointed County Attorney Al Castillo with documentation received from various sources including the county that I determined clearly showed dealings to oust 20.02 (D) from the Charter and a case to uphold the plain meaning of Charter Section 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” 2008 had already seen contention between an angered public and the BOE regarding 20.02 (D) then again when the voters rejected change to this Charter section that November.
The voters overwhelmingly supported stricter guidelines by voting down a proposal to allow board & commission members ability to represent private interest before other boards and commissions. In other words, the citizenry likes the prohibition as it stands-- I agreed, despite what a colleague said about voter “knee-jerk, over-reaction”. I believe the voters got it right.
If the voters had passed the changes to the law, none of the following would have occurred, yet little did I know at that time my involvement in county government would soon ignite a firestorm.
In April of 2009, Castillo told me he had meetings with Kauai Circuit Court Judge Randal Valenciano on several occasions concerning 20.02 (D) and that it was clear to him that attorneys like Charter Review Commissioner Jonathan Chun (or later, Lorna Nishimitsu) who represented clients for pay before other commissions were indeed in violation, but Castillo drew the line there. This ethics law would not apply to other non-paid individuals he told me. I questioned him about the failed ballot measure in November 2008 that would have relieved “the other non-paid individuals” (county board and commission members) and the potential for quid pro quo amongst county officers/ employees but Castillo failed to convince me even then, long before our public conflicts stemming from three ethics complaints I’d file later in May 2009 against BOE Vice-Chairman Mark Hubbard and Judith Lenthall and Cost Control Commissioner Lorna Nishimitsu for violation of 20.02 (D).
Castillo for the first time referred to an obscure 1976 Michael Belles document to help make his case, that, upon investigation, mistakenly declared that the “county code interprets the Charter.” No. The code can only supplement, it in no way interprets, yet Castillo would sell this concept like his predecessor to a majority of BOE members with past mistakes to protect.
To counter this I challenged the BOE to examine supremacy laws.
At the time of my first approaching Castillo, the possibilities for positive change in the county were real, many folks who paid attention to such things were hopeful after long years of dismal results and secrecy from prior County Attorneys. BOE attorney Margaret Sueoka, fired by Castillo and replaced by Mona Clark and Mauna Kea Trask, filed suit against the county. Nobody complained of Sueoka’s absence. But, the fact that many of the old-guard remained under Carvalho, like Lani Nakazawa, should have clued us into the fact that nothing significant would change in the CA’s office. Yes, we would see some new faces, but...
Now, in retrospect, Castillo made things worse for the BOE than his predecessor. Not only would he scam you with old-school tact like recycling an old opinion into a “new” one with the same confusing outcome, but he’d bully you, too, like telling you that you must comply with his opinion or risk personal liability. This was not your grandfather’s CA — or maybe it was.
What’s most confounding to me is the vast confusion and conflicting opinions coming out of Castillo’s office concerning those 21 plain words in 20.02 (D). Castillo reversed himself from our April discussion and it appeared to me he was making a bid to wipe the books clean of 20.02(D).
All three attorneys that served BOE in 2009: Mona Clark, Mauna Kea Trask and Castillo did an unconvincing job cajoling the board with outlandish arguments, for example “this is the way our county has done things for decades” and “perhaps that sort of thinking applies on the mainland”-- insults of intelligence even to the dullest mind in an argument against upholding plain law to protect a handful of politically privileged associates, campaign supporters and a majority board membership mired in past mistakes. Worse, out of the newly interchangeable-counsel-triplet, supported by the majority BOE membership came a spinning of such fantasy yarn as to confuse plain meaning and basic supremacy law: Castillo and Trask particularly embraced aforementioned “county code interpreting the Charter”, “Charter cannot be read in a vacuum” bizarre scenarios conjuring “a chilling effect” on the county that “upholding 20.02 (D) would create ‘absurd results’ which would keep county officers and employees from applying for building permits, driver’s licenses and camping passes”-- all this obscure nonsense in the face of actual, legitimate complaints against three county officers violating a clear prohibition in the Code of Ethics.
The public, outraged and dumbfounded, quickly identified Castillo’s dirty tricks and doubletalk and The Garden Island newspaper among other outlets reported it frequently. I was pleased to fight Castillo’s rubbish all the way, but it cost me.
After an unceremoniously dumping in December 2009, I asked the mayor what I was supposed to do as a sworn BOE officer when witnessing at Council Budget Hearings and a Budget Committee three county officers violating Charter 20.02 (D). Was I supposed to do ‘what has been done for decades’ by turning a blind eye?
I told the mayor, I couldn’t do it.
Disappointingly, he responded woodenly. A puppet’s recital: “…my commissioners need to work together as a team… I am looking for balance… it’s not about me… you shouldn’t take this personal.” It reminded me of a short, unsatisfying conversation I had with Councilman Daryl Kaneshiro a year earlier-- he too was not smitten with the concept of a democratic process with its pesky checks and balances negotiated through a practice of conflicting ideology as though we must all conform to the wishes of the plantation master.
I insisted on clarification from the mayor but he refused to delve into the subject further and repeated his script, “… as a team… balance… it’s not personal…”
The Carvalho Regime: Together We Can’t.
Worse still, by June’s ethics meeting Castillo went beyond the fold by telling us that although the BOE is the client we “must” follow his advice. Thankfully, member Paul Weil, an extremely skillful attorney, did not allow this abuse, but somehow to my dismay Paul did manage to let Nishimitsu off the hook — in his words-- a regrettable error. That portion of the June meeting which Hubbard, Lenthall nor I could participate, a confounding deal was struck by the four-member BOE quorum and Castillo: all three respondents to the May complaints would be found not guilty of violating 20.02 (D) based on a future county attorney opinion. That’s right. As soon as the board “received” an opinion from the CA, the charges would be dropped.
But thanks again to Paul Weil it was not as easy as the status-quo desired. Weil filleted the work product of Castillo & Co. plastering it with the now notorious “fatally flawed” label eventually hashing-out details with Castillo at Weil’s home-- forging compromise. I respected Weil very much for this move. Not only did he make the extra effort for everyone, but he did it with the best of intentions at a time when was torn apart. Weil seemed optimistic. When Castillo agreed and worked to a deal then backed-out by the following ethics meeting leaving Weil to see Castillo’s true colors— the attorneys parted in canyon-sized proportions. Weil, not to be played like a sucker, exposed Castillo and Trask, by releasing his e-mail communications publicly, understandably, in the name of good governance and transparency (www.kauaiworld.com/sunshine).
During these months of unprecedented openness, confusion and in-fighting within the BOE, I began requesting digital audio minutes from the OBC for the ethics meeting open sessions. The summary minutes supplied by staff approved by the board and posted to the Internet paled in comparison to the actual dialog of these hotly contested meetings. The atmosphere at ethics became critically charged and I wanted the verbatim record preserved, especially since the law was being perverted in a very concerted effort between status-quo board members, the CA, and OBC. By this point in time I felt fully alienated by my government chums, Mr. Isobe no longer smiled in passing, Castillo made no eye contact with me at Council meetings and many of my ethics mates resented me for challenging them. BOE meetings became longer and more heated and Chair Leila Fuller who sat to my right grumbled ever more frequently under her breath and became unsympathetic and sometimes mean-spirited toward public testimony.
Even my requests for audio were met with increasingly deflated responses, and worse, “If you keep this up I don’t know if we can be friends any longer.” the secretary addressed me. A joke, yes, but the message was clear:
Bieber’s rocking the boat — it’s unwelcomed and he must pay.
One way of making me pay was to intimidate me by rallying an “investigation”. This investigation, predicated on an inquiry by Vice Chair Hubbard as to how his name and the names of Judith Lenthall and Lorna Nishimitsu got into the newspaper over ethics complaints never unfurled but remained a dark and misty cloud on the ever growing list of executive sessions. In a weird turn of events, a copy of the board’s executive session minutes concerning the investigation turned up in my subsequent BOE package so I read all about what our discombobulated board was up to — again, Isobe was at the forefront ready to assist the investigation with any and all resources available from the OBC, all too zealously the minutes read.
Crazier still was Hubbard’s and Lenthall’s lame attempt at espionage when during our recusal of the June meeting they attempted a ridiculous display of “good-cop/ bad-cop” to get me to answer questions concerning complaints and names getting into The Garden Island. Lenthall did an especially bad job hiding the fact that she was holding her Black Berry device too close to my mouth.
The pinnacle of insanity surrounded the October 2009 BOE meeting. It wasn’t enough that the board meetings were now regularly fraught with ridiculous numbers of executive sessions with never enough votes to get into and unclear as to who should participate and who should recuse themselves for conflicts-of-interest or that now the county disclosure statements were examined by the board in open session — a concept unheard of in the history of Kauai County. Or that nobody really understood how the BOE was going to circumvent responsibility of upholding the law concerning the three complaints filed by now five months earlier.
No, what happened next was a new journey down another rabbit hole replete in recognition.
October 2009, Deputy CA Mona Clark said in open session that “private interest: is defined as anything other than a government entity.” This definition was refused all year in not one, but two new county attorney opinions given the board in prior months of 2009, subsequently challenged by the BOE, particularly Weil, and released to the public. The definition of private interest that sprang forth out of the blue like a sunbeam that morning had been denied long before the May complaints that kept the board in fog was now batted about in open session deliberation between board members as if a beach ball. When Clark defined private interest I could not believe my ears — literally, “private interest— a non-government entity”. But my joy would soon be countered by Weil. Ironically, this is the one definition where the county attorney got it correct and Weil got it wrong. This definition would set the table not only for future interpretations of 20.02 (D) but what the board currently faces in complaints still pending (for example, Vice- Chair Hubbard as respondent for representing a “private interest” 501(c) 3 before Council). In a further perverse twist, eventually, Lenthall and Hubbard agreed!
Later, I requested the audio just like I had done each month prior wanting to hear those words again, “private interest — a non-government entity” in full audio but to my shock and horror my request had been denied from the OBC. They said the digital audio was not available due to a “flash drive error — no audio”. This meant the entire verbatim record was lost. A question crashed through me immediately: was this done intentionally because of Clark’s words?
Shock and horror turned to disgust and suspicion when the following County Council meeting had on its agenda a request from Isobe to destroy audio records. My God, what is going on?
In response to this news I wrote letters to the CA and Council to deny request to destroy any audio records from the BOE because they needed to be preserved in case of any litigation, especially regarding the board’s dealing with 20.02 (D). I found the coincidence between my denial of the October audio and this Council request uncanny. How could this be a mere coincidence? To me it wasn’t coincidence and felt I needed to confront yet again those whom I shared the public trust. Was this a cover-up? A friend asked me how I thought I could get any kind of support from the CA and Council after all the public scrutiny. Why not just talk to Isobe about the records yourself?
By this time I had lost trust in the OBC Administrator. Certainly the feeling was mutual. Since I came on board, no longer was Isobe able to coerce BOE members into protecting CA work product with a super-majority or unanimous vote, or keep disclosure statements secret, or protect political allies like Mattie Yoshioka with favorable advisory opinions vis-à-vis Jonathan Chun a year earlier. O’ the difference a year makes. For Isobe, maintaining a stranglehold on appointees — his kuleana beginning in 2006 under Baptiste was beginning to slip in serious ways.
The more I examined this dynamic, the clearer the idea became-- Isobe’s loss is your gain. Or in the case of these records our loss was his gain, so I imagined. For better or worse, I was not going to let BOE records get destroyed without a fight, even if it meant another costly challenge to yet another pillar in the Carvalho regime.
When the agenda item finally came to the floor of Council, a strange thing happened. A letter from the administration suddenly appeared signed by Isobe and Mayor Carvalho wishing to withdraw the agenda item. I was relieved. The records would be saved. But I felt the Council deserved some explanation as to what was happening behind the scenes. After calling for recess, Chairman Asing asked for public testimony. I approached the microphone, introduced myself and disclosed my membership in the BOE.
At this point something terribly surprising happened and if I had anticipated it I would have handled it differently, but I didn’t. I had no clue that CA Castillo would cut off my testimony before it started. As soon as I introduced myself, Castillo responded with authority. He stated that I would be in violation of the charter and code if I continued testimony. Time froze. I watched in awe as Castillo grinded this testimony to a halt. I looked at the Council, back to Castillo and then back again — Council sat silently and obediently and as still as I did. Castillo, who has no authority in this situation, boldly challenged me and the Council — gambled, and won, initially anyway. It is the Chairman’s prerogative on how to handle public testimony, not the CA. If the Chairman has a question as to the opinion of law concerning testimony he would then ask the testifier to wait a moment while getting legal advice from the attorney. The CA would then offer advice to which the Chairman would respond in conducting the business of testimony. If a testifier chooses, even knowingly, to condemn himself or violate the law he has every right to do so. But the CA may not keep anyone from testimony. It is a violation of one’s First Amendment Right of free speech.
Had I anticipated this move by Castillo, I would have put him on the spot and asked what law was being violated by testifying before Council. But I didn’t. In my inexperience I backed away and I’ll never forget it and always regret not challenging him on the spot.
Fortunately for all of us, Michael Levine of The Garden Island did put Castillo on the spot and asked what law I would have violated. Castillo’s answer: 20.02 (D) “No officer or employee of the county shall appear in behalf of private interests before any county board, commission or agency.” And thankfully, for the public record, Levine printed it.
More importantly, it exposed Castillo as a bad attorney or a political fraud. And if you think there was no political gamesmanship being played there by Castillo considers this: why didn’t Castillo stop Charter Review Commission Chairman Sherman Sheraishi from testifying in favor of the Charter Review Commission appointees at the County Council meeting only weeks later in December 2009?
Because Bieber must pay.
None of the progress in ethics could have been successful without keen journalism and those already participating in our special brand of “democracy”— those willing to chance ridicule, or worse, to point out our government’s faults and needs for improvement. Attention to detail by Michael Levine, Nathan Eagle at The Garden Island and super-heavyweight political reporter Andy Parx at PNN as well as other media outlets have supplied the oft needed exposure the people require and the government deserves. And I would be remiss not to mention the public’s outcry for justice in testimony and the many letters to the editor during the year. Charter champion Horace Stoessel; Attorney and columnist Walter Lewis; Bruce “No-red-tape” Pleas; Government watchdogs like Glenn Mickens, Ken Taylor, Rob Abrew, Caren Diamond and many, more have as much to do with recent breakthroughs in government transparency as I do. Yet, current political movements for change are not nearly enough to take us into 2010 and beyond. This government desperately needs more public involvement.
And bravery is required more consistently from the county rank-in-file to the protester on the streets; from reporters and editors of news pages and blogs to a public willing to write letters and give testimony in commissions and Council meetings. Courageous effort is needed from those who strive to sacrifice for honor and dignity and oath to serve the best interest of the most Kauaians. Remember, my brother and sister citizens, like the mayor says, “It’s not personal.” But I say it’s okay to make it so.
Who of you is willing to pay the price for a better government?
Akaka Bill Passes Committees
SUBHEAD: Bad news. Native Hawaiian tribal rights bill approved by U.S. Senate committees.
Image above: A "Big Island" Hawaiian shave ice stand in an alley in Las Vegas.
From http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrphilmy/3663575145
By Valerie Richardson on 5 January 2010 in Washington Times -
(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/05/native-hawaiian-tribal-rights-bill-sparks-row)
The next time President Obama vacations in his native Hawaii, there could be something new on the island: an Indian tribe.
Two weeks ago, House and Senate committees approved the Native Hawaiian Reorganization Act, which would create a separate government for Native Hawaiians. The legislation, better known as the Akaka bill after its sponsor, Democratic Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, originally stated that the new government's authority would be decided in negotiations with state and federal authorities.
At the last minute, however, Hawaii Democrats, working with the Justice and Interior departments, amended the bill to establish the Native Hawaiian governing entity as a sovereign Indian tribe.
The move ignited a furor in Honolulu. Gov. Linda Lingle and Attorney General Mark Bennett, who found out about the changes just hours before the Dec. 16 House vote, promptly reversed their support for the bill, saying the revisions could endanger Hawaii's economic and legal standing. Both officials are Republicans.
"The new bill explicitly states that it gives the state of Hawaii no authority to tax or regulate the new tribe, while ambiguously stating that nothing in the bill will itself pre-empt state authority over Native Hawaiians or their property," said Mr. Bennett in a statement. "Such a provision would guarantee years, if not decades, of litigation."
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the state's senior Democratic senator, told local reporters in Honolulu last week that differences were being "ironed out" with the governor's office and predicted the Senate would vote on the amended bill in February. But to date, no final deal has been announced.
One problem is that a Native Hawaiian tribe's lands are likely to be far more vast and valuable than those of the average North American tribe on the mainland. Nobody knows exactly how much property would go to the new government — that would be settled in negotiations — but it could be as much as 40 percent of the state's land mass.
That property, known as the "ceded lands," is spread throughout the state, and includes some of Hawaii's prime tourist destinations and military installations, such as Pearl Harbor. The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and Beacon Hill Institute estimate that the Akaka bill would cost the state $689.7 million annually in lost state tax and land-lease revenues, not including the additional cost of setting up the new governing entity.
Supporters argue that Native Hawaiians need their own government in order to address the community's long-standing problems. Surveys show the average income and educational achievement of Native Hawaiians tends to be lower than that of other state residents.
Allowing Native Hawaiians to form an Indian tribe gives them "the exact same rights and protections afforded other native governments in prior federal reorganization legislation," said the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement in a Dec. 15 letter to the House Natural Resources Committee.
"The change … affirms the inherent authority of the Native Hawaiian government and puts it on an equal footing with other Native American governments," said the council.
Whether Native Hawaiians should be viewed in the same way as North American Indians is another topic of debate. Mr. Akaka and others argue that Native Hawaiians, like Indians, are an indigenous and conquered people. Critics say they were never conquered, they've never lived as a separate people, and they participated in the vote to grant Hawaii statehood in 1959.
The bill's foes also argue that the bill would balkanize the state, traditionally a harmonious mix of ethnicities and cultures, and create a race-based spoils system. The bill could also establish a precedent for other groups to try to organize.
"I wonder how long it will be before elements in the Muslim community demand to be separated by race and governed by Shariah law," said Rep. Tom McClintock, California Republican, at the House committee hearing.
At the Dec. 17 Senate Indian Affairs Committee vote, Mr. Akaka downplayed the revisions to the bill, saying the legislation's primary goal remained unchanged.
"While the bill has evolved over the years, it has maintained its true intent: to extend the policy of self-government and self-determination to Native Hawaiians, for the purposes of a federally recognized government-to-government relationship," said Mr. Akaka.
He also said he would be sure to keep the governor and attorney general in the loop in the future. Both of Hawaii's members of Congress, like their Senate counterparts, are Democrats.
The last-minute meddling may have endangered what was once viewed as a legislative slam-dunk. The bill languished for years under President Bush, who had vowed to veto it, but the election of Mr. Obama — who returned from a family holiday vacation to his native state Monday — appeared to remove the final obstacle.
While the bill enjoys the backing of Hawaii's most powerful leaders and institutions, the same can't be said of its popular support. A Zogby International poll commissioned by the Grassroot Institute and released Dec. 15 found that 51 percent of Hawaiians surveyed opposed the bill, while 34 percent supported it.
Image above: A "Big Island" Hawaiian shave ice stand in an alley in Las Vegas.
From http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrphilmy/3663575145
By Valerie Richardson on 5 January 2010 in Washington Times -
(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/05/native-hawaiian-tribal-rights-bill-sparks-row)
The next time President Obama vacations in his native Hawaii, there could be something new on the island: an Indian tribe.
Two weeks ago, House and Senate committees approved the Native Hawaiian Reorganization Act, which would create a separate government for Native Hawaiians. The legislation, better known as the Akaka bill after its sponsor, Democratic Sen. Daniel K. Akaka, originally stated that the new government's authority would be decided in negotiations with state and federal authorities.
At the last minute, however, Hawaii Democrats, working with the Justice and Interior departments, amended the bill to establish the Native Hawaiian governing entity as a sovereign Indian tribe.
The move ignited a furor in Honolulu. Gov. Linda Lingle and Attorney General Mark Bennett, who found out about the changes just hours before the Dec. 16 House vote, promptly reversed their support for the bill, saying the revisions could endanger Hawaii's economic and legal standing. Both officials are Republicans.
"The new bill explicitly states that it gives the state of Hawaii no authority to tax or regulate the new tribe, while ambiguously stating that nothing in the bill will itself pre-empt state authority over Native Hawaiians or their property," said Mr. Bennett in a statement. "Such a provision would guarantee years, if not decades, of litigation."
Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the state's senior Democratic senator, told local reporters in Honolulu last week that differences were being "ironed out" with the governor's office and predicted the Senate would vote on the amended bill in February. But to date, no final deal has been announced.
One problem is that a Native Hawaiian tribe's lands are likely to be far more vast and valuable than those of the average North American tribe on the mainland. Nobody knows exactly how much property would go to the new government — that would be settled in negotiations — but it could be as much as 40 percent of the state's land mass.
That property, known as the "ceded lands," is spread throughout the state, and includes some of Hawaii's prime tourist destinations and military installations, such as Pearl Harbor. The Grassroot Institute of Hawaii and Beacon Hill Institute estimate that the Akaka bill would cost the state $689.7 million annually in lost state tax and land-lease revenues, not including the additional cost of setting up the new governing entity.
Supporters argue that Native Hawaiians need their own government in order to address the community's long-standing problems. Surveys show the average income and educational achievement of Native Hawaiians tends to be lower than that of other state residents.
Allowing Native Hawaiians to form an Indian tribe gives them "the exact same rights and protections afforded other native governments in prior federal reorganization legislation," said the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement in a Dec. 15 letter to the House Natural Resources Committee.
"The change … affirms the inherent authority of the Native Hawaiian government and puts it on an equal footing with other Native American governments," said the council.
Whether Native Hawaiians should be viewed in the same way as North American Indians is another topic of debate. Mr. Akaka and others argue that Native Hawaiians, like Indians, are an indigenous and conquered people. Critics say they were never conquered, they've never lived as a separate people, and they participated in the vote to grant Hawaii statehood in 1959.
The bill's foes also argue that the bill would balkanize the state, traditionally a harmonious mix of ethnicities and cultures, and create a race-based spoils system. The bill could also establish a precedent for other groups to try to organize.
"I wonder how long it will be before elements in the Muslim community demand to be separated by race and governed by Shariah law," said Rep. Tom McClintock, California Republican, at the House committee hearing.
At the Dec. 17 Senate Indian Affairs Committee vote, Mr. Akaka downplayed the revisions to the bill, saying the legislation's primary goal remained unchanged.
"While the bill has evolved over the years, it has maintained its true intent: to extend the policy of self-government and self-determination to Native Hawaiians, for the purposes of a federally recognized government-to-government relationship," said Mr. Akaka.
He also said he would be sure to keep the governor and attorney general in the loop in the future. Both of Hawaii's members of Congress, like their Senate counterparts, are Democrats.
The last-minute meddling may have endangered what was once viewed as a legislative slam-dunk. The bill languished for years under President Bush, who had vowed to veto it, but the election of Mr. Obama — who returned from a family holiday vacation to his native state Monday — appeared to remove the final obstacle.
While the bill enjoys the backing of Hawaii's most powerful leaders and institutions, the same can't be said of its popular support. A Zogby International poll commissioned by the Grassroot Institute and released Dec. 15 found that 51 percent of Hawaiians surveyed opposed the bill, while 34 percent supported it.
Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan
SOURCE: Elli Ward (sayjaz3@hotmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Apollo Kauai announces public meeting to discuss 2010 - 2030 Energy Sustainability Plan.
Image above: The Port Allen KIUC diesel powered electric generating plant provides 75% of Kauai energy. Photo by Juan Wilson.
EVENTS CALENDAR - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - Public Meeting - "Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan"
A public meeting will be hosted by SENTECH Hawaii and KPAA to present the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 2010-2030 (KESP) draft report being developed for the County of Kauai. The Plan has identified renewable and energy efficient opportunities that can help Kauai achieve energy independence from imported oil over the next 20 years. Thursday, January 7, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Peace & Freedom Convention Hall, 4191 Hardy Street, Lihue; doors open at 5:30 p.m. To review the plan, it will be available online January 4 at: www.KauaiEnergySustainabilityPlan.com.
EVENTS CALENDAR - Friday, January 8, 2010 - Interactive Webinar - "Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan"
SENTECH Hawaii will host an interactive webinar to present the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 2010-2030(KESP) draft report being developed for the County of Kauai. From the comfort of your own computer and via conference call from your phone, you can participate in the online meeting from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. The Plan has identified renewable and energy efficient opportunities that can help Kauai achieve energy independence from imported oil over the next 20 years. Webinar log-in instructions are available at www.kauainetwork.org or call KPAA at 632-2005.
Image above: The Port Allen KIUC diesel powered electric generating plant provides 75% of Kauai energy. Photo by Juan Wilson.
EVENTS CALENDAR - Thursday, January 7, 2010 - Public Meeting - "Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan"
A public meeting will be hosted by SENTECH Hawaii and KPAA to present the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 2010-2030 (KESP) draft report being developed for the County of Kauai. The Plan has identified renewable and energy efficient opportunities that can help Kauai achieve energy independence from imported oil over the next 20 years. Thursday, January 7, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm at the Peace & Freedom Convention Hall, 4191 Hardy Street, Lihue; doors open at 5:30 p.m. To review the plan, it will be available online January 4 at: www.KauaiEnergySustainabilityPlan.com.
EVENTS CALENDAR - Friday, January 8, 2010 - Interactive Webinar - "Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan"
SENTECH Hawaii will host an interactive webinar to present the Kauai Energy Sustainability Plan 2010-2030(KESP) draft report being developed for the County of Kauai. From the comfort of your own computer and via conference call from your phone, you can participate in the online meeting from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. The Plan has identified renewable and energy efficient opportunities that can help Kauai achieve energy independence from imported oil over the next 20 years. Webinar log-in instructions are available at www.kauainetwork.org or call KPAA at 632-2005.
KIUC's Future
SUBHEAD: On Thursday, 7 January 2010 KIUC will have a special Board Meeting that will include public comment.
Image above: Residential solar-voltaic generating system in Timaru, New Zealand.
From http://www.smartenergyltd.co.nz/on-site-power-generation
WHAT:
Special Meeting of the Board of Directors
of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC)
WHEN:
Thursday, 7 January 2009 at 10:30am
WHERE:
KIUC Main Conference Room at
4463 Pahee Street, Lihue, Kauai
WHY:
Public Comment as required and consideration of Green Energy Team contract extension.
By Juan Wilson on 5 January 2010 -
On 10 August 2000 the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported:
"The Kauai County Council yesterday "concurred" in a decision by Mayor Maryanne Kusaka to spend up to $100,000 to hire a consultant for an appraisal of Kauai Electric. Left open was the question of whether the county would use the appraisal to fight the purchase of Kauai Electric by a local business co-op before the Public Utilities Commission or as a preliminary step in an attempt by the county to purchase the utility."
Such a course would have entailed risk. There may have even been discontinuity in service for a bit. Had the Kauai County let Kauai Electric go bankrupt, or refused to bailout then owners Citizen's Communications Company, we might be in better shape today. Had the county moved forward in taking over the failing utility, today we might have a debt free, non-profit publicly owned electric company... in other words - a real cooperative.
A BAD DEAL
But that was not to be, and in 2002 when Kauai Island Utility Cooperative took over Kauai Electric for whopping $215 million. From then on the Garden Island was condemned to live with a debt-burdened private utility company with no clue as to how to face the future.
The underlying agenda for KIUC has been to not have anything disturb the lives of those that live on Kauai. That means no interruption or reduction in service. That means no significant change in lifestyle or working arrangements. The result is that KIUC it wants to maintain continuity at any cost.
KIUC has plans to move away from diesel fuel as the primary source of energy production on Kauai. It's just that how and when that happens just doesn't match up with how reality will unfold.
• KIUC plans to build another fossil fuel plant on island is patently absurd.
• KIUC is committed to a bio-fuel plant in what was once a sugarcane mill.
• KIUC wants to use 100 acres of farmland to build a solar thermal generator.
This is so we can keep on doing what we are doing without a pause. All these plans amount to just burning more stuff (raising CO2) in place of growing food or living with less electricity.
KIUC is not a cooperative. It is a monopoly corporation that has a huge debt obligation that the residents of Kauai are enlisted to service. It seems not capable of doing what is necessary to lead us into the future.
A GOOD DEAL
KIUC should have adopted a strategy, that has often been suggested, that would lead to financing a distributed residential generating capacity rather than a centralized large scale system.
These residential capacity would be home photo-voltaic systems, and home wind-generators (both built with battery storage capacity). These residential systems would be attached to a "smart grid" operated by KIUC. Then KIUC would buy all the power provided by these residential systems; sell collected power to those not generating power; and charge a modest access fee to all attached to the cooperative's grid.
There are simple capitalizing instruments, like credit unions, that could offer to loan money to purchase residential generating systems that would at the cost we pay for KIUC power today. Over time KIUC would back away from being a power generating corporation and embrace being a the cooperative network of a distributed power-generating community.
An important point is that people need to realize that they can only use the energy that they can afford to produce themselves themselves.
This direction is the opposite of the strategy KIUC is pursuing. They talk about conservation and alternative (centralized) energy sources, but the reality before us requires massive demand-destruction (using much less power) and distributed generation. Bottom line: We need to burn less - not more!
KIUC's schedule to meet its alternative generating plans is decades too late of the oncoming changes at hand. The ability of financing true change in the KIUC system came and went with the peak of the housing bubble. We may be past the $147/barrel oil of 2008, but in 2009 oil prices nearly doubled to $80/barrel. If there is any economic recovery oil will be past $100/barrel is a flash. If there is no recovery we won't be able to afford KIUC's future plans.
Even so, there are important changes that can be made with little cost. Our state Public Utility Commision (PUC) would need to be involved and KIUC would have to alter its mission from "centralized reliability" to "distributed-flexibility".
Three proposals bear repeating:
ONE - Buy power from Co-op Members:
KIUC needs to get the cap lifted on co-generating restrictions (buying power from residential system). They should buy all power provided by users (at a reasonable discount). That means running the meter backwards and providing payment to co-op members.
TWO - Let Co-op Members Buy From Each Other:
A condition of KIUC co-op membership is that members are restricted from buying power from anyone but KIUC. That is a damper on solutions we need to experiment with.
THREE - Finance Distributed Power Generation:
KIUC should institute a non-profit financial program for small-businesses and home-owners to acquire wind and solar generating capacity.
REALITY CHECK
It appears that neither the KIUC directors or cooperative members are comfortable with the future that is approaching. They dream of techno-fixes or any other means by which things might be kept just as they are. But that is just not going to happen.
Each of us needs to determine how we will provide much more of our own energy, food, transportation and entertainment. If we act effectively we will be more independent and self-reliant. Things won't be worse than they are now - just different.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Municipal Bonds for Solar Panels 11/6/09
Image above: Residential solar-voltaic generating system in Timaru, New Zealand.
From http://www.smartenergyltd.co.nz/on-site-power-generation
WHAT:
Special Meeting of the Board of Directors
of Kauai Island Utility Cooperative (KIUC)
WHEN:
Thursday, 7 January 2009 at 10:30am
WHERE:
KIUC Main Conference Room at
4463 Pahee Street, Lihue, Kauai
WHY:
Public Comment as required and consideration of Green Energy Team contract extension.
By Juan Wilson on 5 January 2010 -
On 10 August 2000 the Honolulu Star Bulletin reported:
"The Kauai County Council yesterday "concurred" in a decision by Mayor Maryanne Kusaka to spend up to $100,000 to hire a consultant for an appraisal of Kauai Electric. Left open was the question of whether the county would use the appraisal to fight the purchase of Kauai Electric by a local business co-op before the Public Utilities Commission or as a preliminary step in an attempt by the county to purchase the utility."
Such a course would have entailed risk. There may have even been discontinuity in service for a bit. Had the Kauai County let Kauai Electric go bankrupt, or refused to bailout then owners Citizen's Communications Company, we might be in better shape today. Had the county moved forward in taking over the failing utility, today we might have a debt free, non-profit publicly owned electric company... in other words - a real cooperative.
A BAD DEAL
But that was not to be, and in 2002 when Kauai Island Utility Cooperative took over Kauai Electric for whopping $215 million. From then on the Garden Island was condemned to live with a debt-burdened private utility company with no clue as to how to face the future.
The underlying agenda for KIUC has been to not have anything disturb the lives of those that live on Kauai. That means no interruption or reduction in service. That means no significant change in lifestyle or working arrangements. The result is that KIUC it wants to maintain continuity at any cost.
KIUC has plans to move away from diesel fuel as the primary source of energy production on Kauai. It's just that how and when that happens just doesn't match up with how reality will unfold.
• KIUC plans to build another fossil fuel plant on island is patently absurd.
• KIUC is committed to a bio-fuel plant in what was once a sugarcane mill.
• KIUC wants to use 100 acres of farmland to build a solar thermal generator.
This is so we can keep on doing what we are doing without a pause. All these plans amount to just burning more stuff (raising CO2) in place of growing food or living with less electricity.
KIUC is not a cooperative. It is a monopoly corporation that has a huge debt obligation that the residents of Kauai are enlisted to service. It seems not capable of doing what is necessary to lead us into the future.
A GOOD DEAL
KIUC should have adopted a strategy, that has often been suggested, that would lead to financing a distributed residential generating capacity rather than a centralized large scale system.
These residential capacity would be home photo-voltaic systems, and home wind-generators (both built with battery storage capacity). These residential systems would be attached to a "smart grid" operated by KIUC. Then KIUC would buy all the power provided by these residential systems; sell collected power to those not generating power; and charge a modest access fee to all attached to the cooperative's grid.
There are simple capitalizing instruments, like credit unions, that could offer to loan money to purchase residential generating systems that would at the cost we pay for KIUC power today. Over time KIUC would back away from being a power generating corporation and embrace being a the cooperative network of a distributed power-generating community.
An important point is that people need to realize that they can only use the energy that they can afford to produce themselves themselves.
This direction is the opposite of the strategy KIUC is pursuing. They talk about conservation and alternative (centralized) energy sources, but the reality before us requires massive demand-destruction (using much less power) and distributed generation. Bottom line: We need to burn less - not more!
KIUC's schedule to meet its alternative generating plans is decades too late of the oncoming changes at hand. The ability of financing true change in the KIUC system came and went with the peak of the housing bubble. We may be past the $147/barrel oil of 2008, but in 2009 oil prices nearly doubled to $80/barrel. If there is any economic recovery oil will be past $100/barrel is a flash. If there is no recovery we won't be able to afford KIUC's future plans.
Even so, there are important changes that can be made with little cost. Our state Public Utility Commision (PUC) would need to be involved and KIUC would have to alter its mission from "centralized reliability" to "distributed-flexibility".
Three proposals bear repeating:
ONE - Buy power from Co-op Members:
KIUC needs to get the cap lifted on co-generating restrictions (buying power from residential system). They should buy all power provided by users (at a reasonable discount). That means running the meter backwards and providing payment to co-op members.
TWO - Let Co-op Members Buy From Each Other:
A condition of KIUC co-op membership is that members are restricted from buying power from anyone but KIUC. That is a damper on solutions we need to experiment with.
THREE - Finance Distributed Power Generation:
KIUC should institute a non-profit financial program for small-businesses and home-owners to acquire wind and solar generating capacity.
REALITY CHECK
It appears that neither the KIUC directors or cooperative members are comfortable with the future that is approaching. They dream of techno-fixes or any other means by which things might be kept just as they are. But that is just not going to happen.
Each of us needs to determine how we will provide much more of our own energy, food, transportation and entertainment. If we act effectively we will be more independent and self-reliant. Things won't be worse than they are now - just different.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Municipal Bonds for Solar Panels 11/6/09
Immodest Proposals
SUBHEAD: Replacing self-defeating habits of the current system with effective incentives our society needs to establish.
Image above: Detail of "The Tax Collector" by Marinus van Reymerswaele (1490-1567).
From http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/10/20/1313217.html
By John Michael Greer on 30 December 2009 in Archdruid Report -
(http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/immodest-proposals.html)
Longtime readers of this blog may not be surprised to find that, after three posts explaining in detail why significant reforms are impossible in the current American political system, I propose to spend several more posts talking about significant reforms that might be part of a functional response to the crisis of our time. I freely grant that there’s irony involved, but proposing useful changes that won’t be enacted right away is by no means as pointless as it may seem in an age of just-in-time ordering and instant gratification.
It’s a safe bet that if something can’t last, it won’t, and the political situation in the United States today may just turn into a poster child for that old but by no means outworn maxim. Most of the world’s nations have replaced one political system with another at least once in the course of the last century; the process can certainly be traumatic, and it doesn’t always solve the problems that forced the change in the first place, but it isn’t the end of the world. Whatever crises drive the existing order into its final implosion, and whatever national traumas supervene until some degree of stability returns, there will be a place for new policies when the future government of the United States, or the regional governments that succeed it, get to work picking up the pieces. Nor, of course, is this blog only read by Americans; and for all I know, some of the ideas I plan on discussing here might strike a responsive chord elsewhere.
One word of caution, though: readers expecting me to offer them a ticket to Utopia are going to be disappointed. There’s a common notion that everything that’s wrong in the world is the fault of the institutions or personalities officially in charge, and can be fixed by replacing them with some other set of institutions or personalities. That notion has been tested more thoroughly by history than any other hypothesis I can think of in the social sciences, and it’s failed abjectly every time. Maybe we should finally get around to admitting that people will not behave like angels no matter how (or whether) they are governed, or who (if anyone) does the governing; and, in the process, admit that human beings are incurably human – that is, capable of the full spectrum of good and evil all by themselves – rather than moral puppets who can be expected to dance on command to the tune of a good or evil system.
It’s easy to come up with a perfect system of human society, so long as it doesn’t have to work in the real world, and it’s very easy to compare a perfect system on paper to the failings of a system in the real world, to the latter’s detriment. Nearly always, though, what John Kenneth Galbraith said about innovation in finance is just as true of innovation in political and social institutions: what gets ballyhooed as new and revolutionary thinking is normally the repetition of a fairly small set of fallacies that worked very poorly the last dozen or so times they were tried, and will work just as poorly this time, too. Those systems that function at all are fairly few in number, though there are a lot of minor variations on the basic themes, and the ones we’ve got now – representative democracy in politics, a market system in economics – have certain advantages. Though the current examples are troubled, corrupt, and at very high risk of being overwhelmed by the consequences of some very bad decisions made over the last few decades, the basic systems are noticeably less dysfunctional most of the time than most of the alternatives.
Thus I’m not going to present a grandiose plan for the complete transformation of everything, of the sort that have been in vogue among social reformers for so many years. Instead, I’m going to suggest a handful of limited, tightly focused changes that I think have a real chance, if they were to be implemented, of canceling out some of the self-defeating habits of the current system and replacing them with effective incentives toward the sort of habits our society needs to establish. I could start in any number of places, but the one I’ve chosen for this week is the seemingly unpromising field of tax policy.
That’s a subject on which a great deal of nonsense abounds just now. While at the public library here in Cumberland the other day, I found a book titled The End of Prosperity. This – I was about to describe it as meretricious, but that would be unfair to honest prostitutes – this pointless waste of inoffensive trees, then, claims that if the US government raised taxes to a level that might just actually pay for the services it provides, the result would be, well, the end of prosperity. Somehow the authors managed to ignore the fact that in the 1950s, when American prosperity was by many measures at its all-time peak, people in the upper tax brackets paid well over 2/3 of their income to Uncle Sam, and that the country has by most measures become less prosperous, not more, as those tax rates have been lowered.
There’s a reason for that, and it ties back into the distinction I made in several earlier posts about the differences among the primary, secondary, and tertiary economies. The primary economy, which is nature, and the secondary economy, which is the production of goods and services by human labor, are subject to negative feedback loops that tend to hold them in balance. The tertiary economy, which is the exchange of money and other forms of abstract wealth, is subject to positive feedback loops that drive it out of balance in ways that unbalance the other two economies as well.
The core of those feedback loops is the way that accumulations of paper wealth multiply in value, and so anything that drains those accumulations and puts them in the pockets of people who spend their money on groceries, instead of more paper, tends to stabilize the economy. That’s what the high tax rates of the Fifties did, and it’s not accidental that the more drastically tax rates have been cut in the last three decades, and the more tertiary wealth has been shielded from taxes by special capital-gains tax rates and the like, the more drastically the tertiary economy has manifested its usual tendency to run to extremes and blow itself up in the process.
Still, there are arguably less scattershot ways to drain off excesses from the tertiary economy, and the tax code also meshes very poorly with the primary economy, with its emerging reality of scarce resources and overburdened natural cycles. In a world where the accelerating exploitation of natural resources and the accumulation of paper wealth are major sources of problems, while the human labor at the core of the secondary economy is the most renewable resource we’ve got, we arguably tax the wrong things.
At the risk of veering off entirely into fantasy, then, let’s imagine a new tax code that taxes the right things instead. In this imaginary code there are no sales taxes, and no taxes on income from wages, salaries, dividends, and rents – that is, no taxes on the secondary economy at all. Instead, there are two classes of taxation. The first, affecting the primary economy, is on natural goods and services; the second, affecting the tertiary economy, is on interest income, capital gains, and all other forms of money made by money.
The taxes on natural goods and services follow the same rough line of logic as property taxes do at present. The federal government, as trustee for the American people, already effectively owns all the real estate within its borders – when you buy property, what you’re buying is the right to use that property within the limits of the laws and the national interest, which is why China can’t just contract with private landowners to buy a couple of disused fishing harbors on our west coast as bases for its navy. The same principle could reasonably apply to every other resource in the country. When you pump oil from the ground, you’re depleting part of the patrimony of the American people, and you should have to pay the government for that privilege. When you dump smoke out of a tailpipe, equally, you’re using the nation’s atmosphere as the gaseous equivalent of a landfill, and once again you should have to pay to do that. Every natural resource of every kind would be subject to the same sort of tax.
Now of course this would mean that the prices of many goods and services would go up considerably. Since everyone would have the money they wouldn’t have to spend on income and sales taxes, this may be a little less of a burden; but the crucial point is that people can avoid resource taxes by their personal choices. If you buy a hybrid car, you’re going to pay a lot less in petroleum tax, and a lot less in tailpipe tax as well – though the extraction taxes for the rare earth minerals in the batteries and electronics may set you back a bit, as they should. If you don’t own a car at all, you laugh all the way to the bank. Similarly, the price of a product made from metal mined from the earth includes the extraction tax for the mining, but the price of a product made from recycled material doesn’t; thus the manufacturer has a big incentive to use the recycled material and undercut the competition.
The second set of new taxes targets a different problem, one discussed already in this post. Right now, with the tax laws we have, it’s to the economic advantage of businesses to pull their money out of producing goods and services, and put it into blowing bubbles in the tertiary economy of paper wealth. That’s why General Motors manufactured more financial paperwork than cars for quite a few years, until it got into a head-on collision with bubble economics. From a broader perspective, that’s why America produces so few goods and services nowadays, and so much in the way of essentially hallucinatory paper wealth. Taxing financial income, but not earned income, does a fair amount to reverse that equation. If putting your money into bonds or derivatives means any profit you make suffers a significant tax bite, while putting your money into producing goods and services means you pocket the profits tax free, those derivatives and bonds will look a lot less inviting.
Notice also how these two kinds of tax work together to take an even larger bite out of one of the most mistaken economic priorities of our time, the replacement of human labor by machines. In case you haven’t noticed, the US has an unemployment problem; even before the most recent bubble burst, good working class jobs were very hard to come by. There are plenty of reasons why that happened, but tax policy that makes employers pay half again or more of the cost of a worker’s wages in order to hire that worker certainly haven’t helped. Eliminate those taxes, and place taxes on energy and natural raw materials instead, and in a good many cases a worker instead of a machine becomes the most cost-effective way to do the job.
Other arrangements could easily be devised to accomplish the same ends. The point I want to make with this extended exercise in nonfinancial speculation, though, is that some of the ways Americans do business, and pay (or don’t pay) for government services, simply don’t fit the realities of an age of ecological limits. A tax code that burdens the secondary economy – which is the economy that actually produces goods and services, remember – while encouraging the wasteful plundering of nature and the bubble-blowing antics of the tertiary economy is not going to help us weather the storms of the near future. A tax code, any tax code, that does the opposite – that makes it more profitable to employ human labor to meet human needs, and less profitable to disrupt the natural cycles that undergird our survival or to feed speculative excesses that pump imbalances into an already troubled economy – could be a very helpful asset in a time of crisis, and could be put in place tolerably easily, without having to tear an entire society to pieces and rebuild it from the ground up.
Would such a new tax code solve all our problems? Of course not. To my mind, though, it’s exactly the attitude that insists that we have to find a single solution that deals with all our problems that helps put any constructive response to those problems out of reach. If we’re to face the difficult future ahead of us with any sort of grace, that worthwhile achievement is much more likely to happen as a result of the tentative, uncertain coping mechanisms sketched out in Warren Johnson’s useful little book Muddling Toward Frugality than it is to unfold from some grandiose plan to reach a perfect world in a single leap. Monkeying with the tax code so that it rewards the economic behaviors that might help us get things of value through the approaching troubles, rather than rewarding the economic behaviors that will only make things worse, is one example of this sort of muddling; others will be brought up for discussion in the weeks to come.
Image above: Detail of "The Tax Collector" by Marinus van Reymerswaele (1490-1567).
From http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2005/10/20/1313217.html
By John Michael Greer on 30 December 2009 in Archdruid Report -
(http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/immodest-proposals.html)
Longtime readers of this blog may not be surprised to find that, after three posts explaining in detail why significant reforms are impossible in the current American political system, I propose to spend several more posts talking about significant reforms that might be part of a functional response to the crisis of our time. I freely grant that there’s irony involved, but proposing useful changes that won’t be enacted right away is by no means as pointless as it may seem in an age of just-in-time ordering and instant gratification.
It’s a safe bet that if something can’t last, it won’t, and the political situation in the United States today may just turn into a poster child for that old but by no means outworn maxim. Most of the world’s nations have replaced one political system with another at least once in the course of the last century; the process can certainly be traumatic, and it doesn’t always solve the problems that forced the change in the first place, but it isn’t the end of the world. Whatever crises drive the existing order into its final implosion, and whatever national traumas supervene until some degree of stability returns, there will be a place for new policies when the future government of the United States, or the regional governments that succeed it, get to work picking up the pieces. Nor, of course, is this blog only read by Americans; and for all I know, some of the ideas I plan on discussing here might strike a responsive chord elsewhere.
One word of caution, though: readers expecting me to offer them a ticket to Utopia are going to be disappointed. There’s a common notion that everything that’s wrong in the world is the fault of the institutions or personalities officially in charge, and can be fixed by replacing them with some other set of institutions or personalities. That notion has been tested more thoroughly by history than any other hypothesis I can think of in the social sciences, and it’s failed abjectly every time. Maybe we should finally get around to admitting that people will not behave like angels no matter how (or whether) they are governed, or who (if anyone) does the governing; and, in the process, admit that human beings are incurably human – that is, capable of the full spectrum of good and evil all by themselves – rather than moral puppets who can be expected to dance on command to the tune of a good or evil system.
It’s easy to come up with a perfect system of human society, so long as it doesn’t have to work in the real world, and it’s very easy to compare a perfect system on paper to the failings of a system in the real world, to the latter’s detriment. Nearly always, though, what John Kenneth Galbraith said about innovation in finance is just as true of innovation in political and social institutions: what gets ballyhooed as new and revolutionary thinking is normally the repetition of a fairly small set of fallacies that worked very poorly the last dozen or so times they were tried, and will work just as poorly this time, too. Those systems that function at all are fairly few in number, though there are a lot of minor variations on the basic themes, and the ones we’ve got now – representative democracy in politics, a market system in economics – have certain advantages. Though the current examples are troubled, corrupt, and at very high risk of being overwhelmed by the consequences of some very bad decisions made over the last few decades, the basic systems are noticeably less dysfunctional most of the time than most of the alternatives.
Thus I’m not going to present a grandiose plan for the complete transformation of everything, of the sort that have been in vogue among social reformers for so many years. Instead, I’m going to suggest a handful of limited, tightly focused changes that I think have a real chance, if they were to be implemented, of canceling out some of the self-defeating habits of the current system and replacing them with effective incentives toward the sort of habits our society needs to establish. I could start in any number of places, but the one I’ve chosen for this week is the seemingly unpromising field of tax policy.
That’s a subject on which a great deal of nonsense abounds just now. While at the public library here in Cumberland the other day, I found a book titled The End of Prosperity. This – I was about to describe it as meretricious, but that would be unfair to honest prostitutes – this pointless waste of inoffensive trees, then, claims that if the US government raised taxes to a level that might just actually pay for the services it provides, the result would be, well, the end of prosperity. Somehow the authors managed to ignore the fact that in the 1950s, when American prosperity was by many measures at its all-time peak, people in the upper tax brackets paid well over 2/3 of their income to Uncle Sam, and that the country has by most measures become less prosperous, not more, as those tax rates have been lowered.
There’s a reason for that, and it ties back into the distinction I made in several earlier posts about the differences among the primary, secondary, and tertiary economies. The primary economy, which is nature, and the secondary economy, which is the production of goods and services by human labor, are subject to negative feedback loops that tend to hold them in balance. The tertiary economy, which is the exchange of money and other forms of abstract wealth, is subject to positive feedback loops that drive it out of balance in ways that unbalance the other two economies as well.
The core of those feedback loops is the way that accumulations of paper wealth multiply in value, and so anything that drains those accumulations and puts them in the pockets of people who spend their money on groceries, instead of more paper, tends to stabilize the economy. That’s what the high tax rates of the Fifties did, and it’s not accidental that the more drastically tax rates have been cut in the last three decades, and the more tertiary wealth has been shielded from taxes by special capital-gains tax rates and the like, the more drastically the tertiary economy has manifested its usual tendency to run to extremes and blow itself up in the process.
Still, there are arguably less scattershot ways to drain off excesses from the tertiary economy, and the tax code also meshes very poorly with the primary economy, with its emerging reality of scarce resources and overburdened natural cycles. In a world where the accelerating exploitation of natural resources and the accumulation of paper wealth are major sources of problems, while the human labor at the core of the secondary economy is the most renewable resource we’ve got, we arguably tax the wrong things.
At the risk of veering off entirely into fantasy, then, let’s imagine a new tax code that taxes the right things instead. In this imaginary code there are no sales taxes, and no taxes on income from wages, salaries, dividends, and rents – that is, no taxes on the secondary economy at all. Instead, there are two classes of taxation. The first, affecting the primary economy, is on natural goods and services; the second, affecting the tertiary economy, is on interest income, capital gains, and all other forms of money made by money.
The taxes on natural goods and services follow the same rough line of logic as property taxes do at present. The federal government, as trustee for the American people, already effectively owns all the real estate within its borders – when you buy property, what you’re buying is the right to use that property within the limits of the laws and the national interest, which is why China can’t just contract with private landowners to buy a couple of disused fishing harbors on our west coast as bases for its navy. The same principle could reasonably apply to every other resource in the country. When you pump oil from the ground, you’re depleting part of the patrimony of the American people, and you should have to pay the government for that privilege. When you dump smoke out of a tailpipe, equally, you’re using the nation’s atmosphere as the gaseous equivalent of a landfill, and once again you should have to pay to do that. Every natural resource of every kind would be subject to the same sort of tax.
Now of course this would mean that the prices of many goods and services would go up considerably. Since everyone would have the money they wouldn’t have to spend on income and sales taxes, this may be a little less of a burden; but the crucial point is that people can avoid resource taxes by their personal choices. If you buy a hybrid car, you’re going to pay a lot less in petroleum tax, and a lot less in tailpipe tax as well – though the extraction taxes for the rare earth minerals in the batteries and electronics may set you back a bit, as they should. If you don’t own a car at all, you laugh all the way to the bank. Similarly, the price of a product made from metal mined from the earth includes the extraction tax for the mining, but the price of a product made from recycled material doesn’t; thus the manufacturer has a big incentive to use the recycled material and undercut the competition.
The second set of new taxes targets a different problem, one discussed already in this post. Right now, with the tax laws we have, it’s to the economic advantage of businesses to pull their money out of producing goods and services, and put it into blowing bubbles in the tertiary economy of paper wealth. That’s why General Motors manufactured more financial paperwork than cars for quite a few years, until it got into a head-on collision with bubble economics. From a broader perspective, that’s why America produces so few goods and services nowadays, and so much in the way of essentially hallucinatory paper wealth. Taxing financial income, but not earned income, does a fair amount to reverse that equation. If putting your money into bonds or derivatives means any profit you make suffers a significant tax bite, while putting your money into producing goods and services means you pocket the profits tax free, those derivatives and bonds will look a lot less inviting.
Notice also how these two kinds of tax work together to take an even larger bite out of one of the most mistaken economic priorities of our time, the replacement of human labor by machines. In case you haven’t noticed, the US has an unemployment problem; even before the most recent bubble burst, good working class jobs were very hard to come by. There are plenty of reasons why that happened, but tax policy that makes employers pay half again or more of the cost of a worker’s wages in order to hire that worker certainly haven’t helped. Eliminate those taxes, and place taxes on energy and natural raw materials instead, and in a good many cases a worker instead of a machine becomes the most cost-effective way to do the job.
Other arrangements could easily be devised to accomplish the same ends. The point I want to make with this extended exercise in nonfinancial speculation, though, is that some of the ways Americans do business, and pay (or don’t pay) for government services, simply don’t fit the realities of an age of ecological limits. A tax code that burdens the secondary economy – which is the economy that actually produces goods and services, remember – while encouraging the wasteful plundering of nature and the bubble-blowing antics of the tertiary economy is not going to help us weather the storms of the near future. A tax code, any tax code, that does the opposite – that makes it more profitable to employ human labor to meet human needs, and less profitable to disrupt the natural cycles that undergird our survival or to feed speculative excesses that pump imbalances into an already troubled economy – could be a very helpful asset in a time of crisis, and could be put in place tolerably easily, without having to tear an entire society to pieces and rebuild it from the ground up.
Would such a new tax code solve all our problems? Of course not. To my mind, though, it’s exactly the attitude that insists that we have to find a single solution that deals with all our problems that helps put any constructive response to those problems out of reach. If we’re to face the difficult future ahead of us with any sort of grace, that worthwhile achievement is much more likely to happen as a result of the tentative, uncertain coping mechanisms sketched out in Warren Johnson’s useful little book Muddling Toward Frugality than it is to unfold from some grandiose plan to reach a perfect world in a single leap. Monkeying with the tax code so that it rewards the economic behaviors that might help us get things of value through the approaching troubles, rather than rewarding the economic behaviors that will only make things worse, is one example of this sort of muddling; others will be brought up for discussion in the weeks to come.
The Futility Economy
SUBHEAD: The people in charge of things will lose their vested legitimacy in a flash, and the institutions they command will become irrelevant overnight.
Image above: Closing a Summer Cottage, Quogue, New York, a 1957 Norman Rockwell art-directed Colorama by Ralph Amdursky and Charles Baker. From Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904
By James Kunstler on 4 January 2010 in Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/01/the-futility-economy.html)
It's the first business day of the new year and oil is trading above $80 a barrel, which means the price has re-entered the danger zone where it can crush industrial economies. This is a central element of the predicament we find ourselves in. The US economy is essentially a Happy Motoring economy. During the whole nervous period since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, American gasoline consumption hardly went down at all, though so many other activities collapsed, from house-building to trucking. Yesterday, The Seattle Times published a story with the idiotic headline: Oil Touches $80 on US Economy, Demand Optimism. Apparently, they think high oil prices are "a good sign."
Image above: Closing a Summer Cottage, Quogue, New York, a 1957 Norman Rockwell art-directed Colorama by Ralph Amdursky and Charles Baker. From Vanity Fair http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904
By James Kunstler on 4 January 2010 in Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/01/the-futility-economy.html)
It's the first business day of the new year and oil is trading above $80 a barrel, which means the price has re-entered the danger zone where it can crush industrial economies. This is a central element of the predicament we find ourselves in. The US economy is essentially a Happy Motoring economy. During the whole nervous period since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, American gasoline consumption hardly went down at all, though so many other activities collapsed, from house-building to trucking. Yesterday, The Seattle Times published a story with the idiotic headline: Oil Touches $80 on US Economy, Demand Optimism. Apparently, they think high oil prices are "a good sign."
How much can a nation not get it? Would $100 oil ignite a new orgy of "consumer" spending and another round of investment in commercial real estate? Welcome to the Futility Economy. This is the economy where Nature and its material companion, Reality, punish us for our stupidity and fecklessness. This is the economy that will tear the United States apart, after it bankrupts us at every level, and mercilessly drives the population down by one-third through starvation, homelessness, violence, disease, and sheer political cruelty.
Whatever you thought our economy was the past thirty years -- whatever model of it you have in your head -- that is definitely not what we are going back to. Like one of Dickens's Yuletide ghosts, Reality is leading us by the hand into new circumstances. We resist like crazy. We throw our hands over our eyes. We don't want to look. We want to return to the comfort of our dreary routines -- living in places that aren't worth caring about, weaving endlessly in freeway traffic, drawing a paycheck at the air-conditioned cubicle, inhaling Buffalo wings by the platterful, with periodic side-trips to the state-chartered casino where there's always a chance of scoring a lifetime's income on one lucky bet. And at the end of the day, you can retire with a simulated prostitute on your laptop screen! And not even have to fork over a dime -- except perhaps for the Internet connection fee.
Reality is taking us out of that familiar, if sordid, realm, whether we like it or not. Our destination is an everyday economy where you rarely travel far from the place you live, where you have to make provision for you own health, your own old age, your own income, your own diet, your own security, and your own education. If you're really fortunate, some or all of these necessities can be obtained in conjunction with your neighbors in the place where you live -- but don't expect an increasingly mythical federal government to supply any of it. Expect a new and different way of organizing households based on extended families and kinship groups. Be prepared for agriculture to return to the foreground of everyday life, where farming is back at the center of the economy. Think about how you will cultivate your best role in a social network so the things you do will be truly valued by the other people who know you. Learn how to make your own music and write your own scripts. Try to study history. Resist cults. Keep your mind clear and your senses sharp.
Even if you have a dim sense that this is where we're headed, most of you probably want to stay where you are. The investments we've made in the current mode of existence are so monumental that we can't imagine letting go of them. This will be the theme of American life for the next couple of years as we struggle mightily to escape the confining armor of the Futility Economy and move closer to ways of life that have more of a future. Right now, all the power and authority in our culture has dedicated itself to remaining inside that old armor.
The Master Wish around the country, including among people who ought to know better, is that we can "solve" our economic problem by finding some other way to run all the cars. Even hardcore environmentalists yammer incessantly about hybrid and "plug-in" cars as the "solution" to our blues. One of Barack Obama's first acts as president was to "save" the giant car companies. This is exactly the kind of signature behavior of a Futility Economy. It's based on the idea that we have to continue driving cars all the time and for everything, at all costs.
The religion of the Futility Economy is Techno-Triumphalism, which is the belief that an endless sequence of magic tricks performed by shaman scientists can defeat the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which rules the universe -- which true scientists ought to know cannot be defeated. Their colleagues, the shaman economists believe in parallel magic tricks, such as the idea that increased borrowing can "solve" a problem of runaway over-indebtedness. These are the actions that currently engage the people in charge of things in our society.
Given this current state of things, and the current course we're on, my guess is that when the falsity of these ideas and actions are exposed, they will become evident not gradually but very rapidly and shockingly. The people in charge of things will lose their vested legitimacy in a flash, and the institutions they command will become irrelevant overnight. The process would be traumatic for all of us as routines we counted on for a thousand particulars of everyday life vanish or collapse. A Great Indignation will rise across the land over the perceived swindles involved. A lot of effort will go into avenging the swindles instead of rebuilding an economy out of the ashes of futility.
Personally, I would like to see a different outcome. I'd like to see a new birth of intelligence, perhaps in the same way that President Lincoln invoked "a new birth of freedom" after an earlier convulsion in our history. The question is: do we have the resources of national character left to make that happen?
How much land do we need?
SUBHEAD: How much land is actually needed for human sustainability?
By Peter Goodchild on 01 January 2010 in Culture Change -
(http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=585&Itemid=1)
Image above: Illustration, by Bryan Christie, for CNN article on Detroit urban farming.
[IB Editor's note: This article is a response to the Fortune magazine/CNN.com report on Detroit's urban farming trend "Can farming save Detroit?". The author has provided some basics on crops and human needs.]
The amount of land needed for farming with manual labor would depend on several factors: the type of soil, the climate, and the kinds of crops to be grown. The highest-yielding varieties are not necessarily the most disease-resistant, or the most suitable for the climate or the soil, or the easiest to store. The weather also makes a big difference: too little rain can damage a crop, and too much rain can do the same. Unusually cold weather can damage some crops, and unusually hot weather can damage others. Without irrigation -- relying solely on rain -- the yield is less than if the crops were watered.
But here are some rough figures. Let us use the production of corn (maize) as the basis for our calculations, and for now let us pretend that someone is going to live entirely on maize. “Corn” or “maize” here does not mean the vegetable that is normally eaten as “corn on the cob,” but the types that are mainly used to produce cornmeal; these are sometimes referred to as “grain corn” or “field corn.” Corn is very high-yielding and can be grown easily with hand tools, but it is only practical in areas with long periods of warmth and sunshine; even in most parts of North America it is not easy to grow north of about latitude 45.
A hard-working adult (e.g., a farmer) burns about 5,000 kilocalories (“calories”) per day, or 2 million kilocalories per year. With non-mechanized agriculture, the yield of corn is about 2,000 kg/ha. The resulting food energy is about 7 million kcal/ha. Under such conditions, then, 0.5 ha of corn would support approximately 2 people. (The data can be found in David Pimentel’s many writings on this subject.) Potatoes require about 50 percent less land than “grain-corn,” but they are troublesome in terms of insects and diseases. Wheat, on the other hand, requires approximately 50 percent more land than maize to produce the same amount of kilocalories. Beans require about 100 percent more land than corn.
“Root crops” such as turnips, carrots, or beets have yields at least 10 times greater than corn, but they also have a much higher water content; their actual yield in kilocalories is slightly less than that of corn. To determine whether a country can feed itself with manual labor, we need to look at the ratio of population to arable land. With manual labor, as noted, 0.5 ha of corn-producing land can support only 2 people. Any country with a larger ratio than that would be undergoing famine. The problem might be relieved to some extent by international aid, but without fossil fuels for transportation such international aid would be negligible.
And this ratio is for corn, a high-yield crop; we are also assuming that crops will not be wasted by feeding them to livestock in large amounts. In the early twenty-first century, according to the CIA World Factbook, the world as a whole has a population-to-arable ratio of 438 people per km2 (square kilometers). Conversely, less than half of the world’s 200-odd countries actually pass that test, and many of those are countries that have relatively low population density only because they have been ravaged by war or other forms of political turmoil.
The Arabian Peninsula, most of eastern Asia, and most of the Pacific islands are far too crowded. Even the UK scores badly at 1,069:1. There might be serious conflicts between the haves and the have-nots, and isolationism might be a common response.
See also:
Can Farming Save Detroit? 12/29/09 CNN Money -
(http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/29/news/economy/farming_detroit.fortune/index.htm) .
By Peter Goodchild on 01 January 2010 in Culture Change -
(http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=585&Itemid=1)
Image above: Illustration, by Bryan Christie, for CNN article on Detroit urban farming.
[IB Editor's note: This article is a response to the Fortune magazine/CNN.com report on Detroit's urban farming trend "Can farming save Detroit?". The author has provided some basics on crops and human needs.]
The amount of land needed for farming with manual labor would depend on several factors: the type of soil, the climate, and the kinds of crops to be grown. The highest-yielding varieties are not necessarily the most disease-resistant, or the most suitable for the climate or the soil, or the easiest to store. The weather also makes a big difference: too little rain can damage a crop, and too much rain can do the same. Unusually cold weather can damage some crops, and unusually hot weather can damage others. Without irrigation -- relying solely on rain -- the yield is less than if the crops were watered.
But here are some rough figures. Let us use the production of corn (maize) as the basis for our calculations, and for now let us pretend that someone is going to live entirely on maize. “Corn” or “maize” here does not mean the vegetable that is normally eaten as “corn on the cob,” but the types that are mainly used to produce cornmeal; these are sometimes referred to as “grain corn” or “field corn.” Corn is very high-yielding and can be grown easily with hand tools, but it is only practical in areas with long periods of warmth and sunshine; even in most parts of North America it is not easy to grow north of about latitude 45.
A hard-working adult (e.g., a farmer) burns about 5,000 kilocalories (“calories”) per day, or 2 million kilocalories per year. With non-mechanized agriculture, the yield of corn is about 2,000 kg/ha. The resulting food energy is about 7 million kcal/ha. Under such conditions, then, 0.5 ha of corn would support approximately 2 people. (The data can be found in David Pimentel’s many writings on this subject.) Potatoes require about 50 percent less land than “grain-corn,” but they are troublesome in terms of insects and diseases. Wheat, on the other hand, requires approximately 50 percent more land than maize to produce the same amount of kilocalories. Beans require about 100 percent more land than corn.
“Root crops” such as turnips, carrots, or beets have yields at least 10 times greater than corn, but they also have a much higher water content; their actual yield in kilocalories is slightly less than that of corn. To determine whether a country can feed itself with manual labor, we need to look at the ratio of population to arable land. With manual labor, as noted, 0.5 ha of corn-producing land can support only 2 people. Any country with a larger ratio than that would be undergoing famine. The problem might be relieved to some extent by international aid, but without fossil fuels for transportation such international aid would be negligible.
And this ratio is for corn, a high-yield crop; we are also assuming that crops will not be wasted by feeding them to livestock in large amounts. In the early twenty-first century, according to the CIA World Factbook, the world as a whole has a population-to-arable ratio of 438 people per km2 (square kilometers). Conversely, less than half of the world’s 200-odd countries actually pass that test, and many of those are countries that have relatively low population density only because they have been ravaged by war or other forms of political turmoil.
The Arabian Peninsula, most of eastern Asia, and most of the Pacific islands are far too crowded. Even the UK scores badly at 1,069:1. There might be serious conflicts between the haves and the have-nots, and isolationism might be a common response.
See also:
Can Farming Save Detroit? 12/29/09 CNN Money -
(http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/29/news/economy/farming_detroit.fortune/index.htm) .
Yap Island Photo Journal
SOURCE: Andy Parx (andyparx@yahoo.com) covered this article here.
SUBHEAD: Just four decades ago Yap Island was much like Hawaii in the 18th century.
By Damon Tucker on 13 December 2009 in Damon Tucker Blog -
(http://damontucker.com/2009/12/13/1966-yap-and-the-outter-islands-a-photo-journal)
Image above: A typical Yap house in 1966 is part of Damon Tucker's photo journal.
[Editor's Note: Yap Island is about 15 miles long, 800 miles north of Papua New Guinea and 800 miles east of the Philppines. Please visit links for a delightful, educational, photo essay.]
In 1961, my mother, Su Rowe Tucker, moved to Pahala, on the Big Island where her father and mother (My Grandparents) Dr. P.E. (Ted) Rowe and Elizabeth (Betty) Rowe were the Physician/Surgeon for the private Pahala Hospital run by C. Brewer Corp.
In 1965, Dr. Rowe (my grandfather) was hired for two years by the US Federal Government to run the Yap Hospital from 1965 to 1967. In 1966, my mom and my two uncles, Bob and Mike Rowe, went to visit them in Yap. The posts evoke mixed feelings showing an indigenous culture and a Michener-like juxtaposition with the fish-out-of-water westerners. It’s a simple lifestyle that a short 40-plus years ago was apparently reminiscent of Hawai`i in the late 18th and early 19th century and it’s hard not to feel both wistful and angry that neither exists anymore today.
To see more:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Who
Part III: Moms Tale of Arrival
Part IV: A Yapese Party
Part V: The Homes and Structures of Yap
Part VI: Quotes from the Diary (Part A)
Part VII: Quotest from the Diary (Part B)
See also:
Island Breath: Hawaii before the crowds 10/12/07
SUBHEAD: Just four decades ago Yap Island was much like Hawaii in the 18th century.
By Damon Tucker on 13 December 2009 in Damon Tucker Blog -
(http://damontucker.com/2009/12/13/1966-yap-and-the-outter-islands-a-photo-journal)
Image above: A typical Yap house in 1966 is part of Damon Tucker's photo journal.
[Editor's Note: Yap Island is about 15 miles long, 800 miles north of Papua New Guinea and 800 miles east of the Philppines. Please visit links for a delightful, educational, photo essay.]
In 1961, my mother, Su Rowe Tucker, moved to Pahala, on the Big Island where her father and mother (My Grandparents) Dr. P.E. (Ted) Rowe and Elizabeth (Betty) Rowe were the Physician/Surgeon for the private Pahala Hospital run by C. Brewer Corp.
In 1965, Dr. Rowe (my grandfather) was hired for two years by the US Federal Government to run the Yap Hospital from 1965 to 1967. In 1966, my mom and my two uncles, Bob and Mike Rowe, went to visit them in Yap. The posts evoke mixed feelings showing an indigenous culture and a Michener-like juxtaposition with the fish-out-of-water westerners. It’s a simple lifestyle that a short 40-plus years ago was apparently reminiscent of Hawai`i in the late 18th and early 19th century and it’s hard not to feel both wistful and angry that neither exists anymore today.
To see more:
Part I: Introduction
Part II: Who
Part III: Moms Tale of Arrival
Part IV: A Yapese Party
Part V: The Homes and Structures of Yap
Part VI: Quotes from the Diary (Part A)
Part VII: Quotest from the Diary (Part B)
See also:
Island Breath: Hawaii before the crowds 10/12/07
The Oil Price Paradox
SUBHEAD: In 2009, world oil demand dropped for only the second year in a row while prices rose.
Image above: Illustration of a last-chance-for-gas station in the American west. From http://eiuenergy.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/summertime-blues
[IB Editor's Note -- It is the editor's belief that oil market prices have been manipulated in 2009 (here's how), a continuation of what happened in mid-2008, as falling demand would have otherwise seen oil prices remain low or fall. It is believed that manipulation up to the $70 to $80 per barrel level is a key level that is sought for both new investment into alternative energy development and for fiscal balance in a number of OPEC nations.]
World oil production demand has dropped for the first time since the early 1980's for the second successive year, as the world economy remains confronted with the deepest and most wide-spread contraction since the 1930's.
This observation was made at the 155th extra-ordinary meeting of the conference of the Organization of Petroleum and Oil Exporting Countries (OPEC) that took place in the Angolan capital, Luanda last week.
In a media statement issued after the end of the conference, OPEC member States said that although the asset market prices have rebounded and economic growth has resumed in some parts of the world, it is not yet clear how strong or durable the recovery might be. "With the world still faced by shrinking industrial production, low private consumption and high unemployment, the conference once again decided to maintain current oil production levels unchanged for the time being," the media release said, Nampa quoted as saying.
The OPEC members States, in taking this decision, said that this is proof of their repeated commitment to the individually agreed production allocations, as well as their readiness to rapidly respond to any developments which might place oil market stability and their interests in jeopardy. The Secretariat is to continue closely monitoring the market, keeping member countries abreast of developments as they occur.
The situation will be reviewed at the next Ordinary Meeting of the Conference. In taking the above decision, Heads of Delegation reiterated OPEC's statutory commitment to providing an economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, whilst stabilizing the market and realizing the organization's objective of maintaining crude oil prices at fair and equitable levels, for the future well-being of the market and the benefit of both producers and consumers. The conference called on the non-OPEC producers and exporters to work closely with it to support oil markets stabilization in the interests of oil market stability.
Environmental concerns were also discussed at the conference, while the oil market outlook for 2010 was also reviewed. OPEC's mission is to co-ordinate and unify the petroleum policies of member countries, and ensure the stabilsation of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital to those investing in the petroleum industry. OPEC is a group of 12 states made up of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Peak Oil Demand
By Julian Murdoch on 9 December 2009 in Seeking Alpha -
(http://seekingalpha.com/article/176440-peak-oil-demand)
Between recent consumption data and the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2009 report released last month, it's time for some serious questions when it comes to oil demand. Perhaps the biggest is this: Will oil fields be ready to meet existing and future demand, or will low investment in capital projects now cause bigger problems later down the line?
The big news on Monday was that U.S. oil demand keeps falling, according to the EIA, who said that U.S. oil demand in September was 2.74 percent lower than previously thought. September consumption came in at 18.362 million barrels per day—not a good sign for oil bulls who have been looking for any sign of strengthening U.S. oil demand to support higher prices.
Furthermore, yesterday's This Week In Petroleum report (covered extensively by Brad Zigler ) showed that once again, crude oil inventories rose. We now have over 24 days' worth of supply—a full 2 and a half days more than we had this time a year ago.
These numbers jive with the latest World Energy Outlook 2009 report (WEO '09), in which the IEA forecasts 2009's global energy use to actually fall for the first time since 1981. I can't say that forecast surprised anyone: From the oil company bigwigs to the minivan-driving soccer moms, many have predicted a drop in energy consumption due to the economic crisis. In fact, a recent survey by accounting and consulting firm BDO showed that oil executives aren't expecting energy demand to rebound until at least 2011.
What was surprising, however, was the WEO '09 long-term perspective on oil demand.
The Incredible Shrinking OECD Oil Demand
Between now and 2030, says the IEA, global oil demand will grow just 1 percent per year, with demand reaching 105 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2030, or a 24 percent increase from 2008's demand of 85 mb/d. The IEA has been singing this tune for awhile; as The Oil Drum noted, the IEA has consistently dropped its 2030 demand numbers ever since its 2004 forecast of 121 mb/d. That 16 mb/d difference is a rather huge change of heart over the global financial crisis.
But what's most interesting is the specificity underpinning the demand numbers. Although demand is still forecast to increase, the real shocker here is the IEA's prediction that oil demand will actually drop for the next 20 years in OECD countries. Instead, the demand growth will come primarily from China, India and the Middle East:
Given that China and India are two of the fastest-growing economies in the world, growth there seems logical, but what's strange is the relatively large decrease in oil demand in the U.S., Canada and other OECD countries. Why the sudden decrease? Is it due to a sudden rash of widespread conservationism? Continued economic weakness? Or is it just that OECD countries tend to have slow, steady population rates, and their economies are at such a point that demand will remain relatively stable from here on out?
Regardless of the specific reason, the economic implications of this base scenario are somewhat staggering. If oil consumption is a sign of economic activity, then the implication here is that the U.S. is heading into an energy recession of epic proportions.
By Wisma Bernama on 29 December 2009 in Bernama.com -
Image above: Illustration of a last-chance-for-gas station in the American west. From http://eiuenergy.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/summertime-blues
[IB Editor's Note -- It is the editor's belief that oil market prices have been manipulated in 2009 (here's how), a continuation of what happened in mid-2008, as falling demand would have otherwise seen oil prices remain low or fall. It is believed that manipulation up to the $70 to $80 per barrel level is a key level that is sought for both new investment into alternative energy development and for fiscal balance in a number of OPEC nations.]
"World Demand For Oil Has Dropped: OPEC"
In a media statement issued after the end of the conference, OPEC member States said that although the asset market prices have rebounded and economic growth has resumed in some parts of the world, it is not yet clear how strong or durable the recovery might be. "With the world still faced by shrinking industrial production, low private consumption and high unemployment, the conference once again decided to maintain current oil production levels unchanged for the time being," the media release said, Nampa quoted as saying.
The OPEC members States, in taking this decision, said that this is proof of their repeated commitment to the individually agreed production allocations, as well as their readiness to rapidly respond to any developments which might place oil market stability and their interests in jeopardy. The Secretariat is to continue closely monitoring the market, keeping member countries abreast of developments as they occur.
The situation will be reviewed at the next Ordinary Meeting of the Conference. In taking the above decision, Heads of Delegation reiterated OPEC's statutory commitment to providing an economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, whilst stabilizing the market and realizing the organization's objective of maintaining crude oil prices at fair and equitable levels, for the future well-being of the market and the benefit of both producers and consumers. The conference called on the non-OPEC producers and exporters to work closely with it to support oil markets stabilization in the interests of oil market stability.
Environmental concerns were also discussed at the conference, while the oil market outlook for 2010 was also reviewed. OPEC's mission is to co-ordinate and unify the petroleum policies of member countries, and ensure the stabilsation of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital to those investing in the petroleum industry. OPEC is a group of 12 states made up of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Libya, Algeria, Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Peak Oil Demand
By Julian Murdoch on 9 December 2009 in Seeking Alpha -
(http://seekingalpha.com/article/176440-peak-oil-demand)
Between recent consumption data and the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2009 report released last month, it's time for some serious questions when it comes to oil demand. Perhaps the biggest is this: Will oil fields be ready to meet existing and future demand, or will low investment in capital projects now cause bigger problems later down the line?
The big news on Monday was that U.S. oil demand keeps falling, according to the EIA, who said that U.S. oil demand in September was 2.74 percent lower than previously thought. September consumption came in at 18.362 million barrels per day—not a good sign for oil bulls who have been looking for any sign of strengthening U.S. oil demand to support higher prices.
Furthermore, yesterday's This Week In Petroleum report (covered extensively by Brad Zigler ) showed that once again, crude oil inventories rose. We now have over 24 days' worth of supply—a full 2 and a half days more than we had this time a year ago.
These numbers jive with the latest World Energy Outlook 2009 report (WEO '09), in which the IEA forecasts 2009's global energy use to actually fall for the first time since 1981. I can't say that forecast surprised anyone: From the oil company bigwigs to the minivan-driving soccer moms, many have predicted a drop in energy consumption due to the economic crisis. In fact, a recent survey by accounting and consulting firm BDO showed that oil executives aren't expecting energy demand to rebound until at least 2011.
What was surprising, however, was the WEO '09 long-term perspective on oil demand.
The Incredible Shrinking OECD Oil Demand
Between now and 2030, says the IEA, global oil demand will grow just 1 percent per year, with demand reaching 105 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2030, or a 24 percent increase from 2008's demand of 85 mb/d. The IEA has been singing this tune for awhile; as The Oil Drum noted, the IEA has consistently dropped its 2030 demand numbers ever since its 2004 forecast of 121 mb/d. That 16 mb/d difference is a rather huge change of heart over the global financial crisis.
But what's most interesting is the specificity underpinning the demand numbers. Although demand is still forecast to increase, the real shocker here is the IEA's prediction that oil demand will actually drop for the next 20 years in OECD countries. Instead, the demand growth will come primarily from China, India and the Middle East:
Regardless of the specific reason, the economic implications of this base scenario are somewhat staggering. If oil consumption is a sign of economic activity, then the implication here is that the U.S. is heading into an energy recession of epic proportions.
Maximum Kauai Population
SUBHEAD: In response to "Early Hawaiian Agriculture" article we are reposting one, from five years ago, speculating on maximum prehistoric Kauai population.
Image above: Theoretical map of places taro might readily be grown on Kauai by Juan Wilson.
The Island Legend in this case is the oft repeated statistic that before European contact there were once 200,000 Hawaiians living on Kauai. When I first heard this I was amazed. It was part of a set of stories that includes the one that newbies hear while looking into Kalalau Valley from the Kokee Lookout, "Did you know that 5000 Hawaiians once lived in the valley?". There are certainly many myths surrounding Hawaii. Some are strengthened by postulating a large ancient population. For example, I've heard one theory that Hawaii was an ancient Atlantis and the source of a great prehistoric civilization that populated the world and that has been lost.
Sustainable Self-Sufficiency for Kauai
Obviously, for the whole of humanity, the Earth is an island. A blue planet in the black of space. Sustainable self-sufficiency is the key for people living on an island, or a planet. People can’t live for long on an island if they burn down the forest, kill the animals and breed like insects. The Hawaiian Islands have always struck me as a little solar system of planets in a blue ocean of sky and sea. Each of Hawaii’s islands are surprisingly different each in its own way. And this island, Kauai, has been a blessed in many ways.
See also:
Island Breath: Sustainable 2/11/04
By Juan Wilson on 22 February 2004 in Island Breath - (http://www.islandbreath.org/2004Year/09-science/science03population.html)
Looking at where the taro might grow
Image above: HI DBED map of modern Kauai agricultural productivity. Darkest color is most productive. White areas are considered urban and not agricultural.
Kauai Carrying Capacity The map above was created by a GIS system for the Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism to identify the areas of highest agricultural productivity. They are Land Study Bureau maps and are available for the entire state at the DBEDT website http://www.ehawaiigov.org/dbedt/op/html/gismain.html. Note that the darker areas are the most productive. The maps were developed with the assumption that water is diverted from the valleys to reach some highland plains and that the water table of the Mana Plain is pumped to a low enough level for agriculture. Moreover, the areas that are developed as "urban", including such anomalies as the runways at the PMRF are excluded from the maps designations of productivity. None the less, to date this map is the best base map I have found to date to use as a source to quantify the areas populated by pre-European Hawaiian people. I have prepared a map that focuses on lowland valleys and areas where fresh water was readily available. The result is the map below. The brown areas in the map are places where I estimate that there might have been concentrations of Hawaiians. The total area in brown is 34,703 acres. |
Image above: Theoretical map of places taro might readily be grown on Kauai by Juan Wilson.
Most sources agree that taro is a staple with a very high calorie yield per acre; higher than corn or rice. An acre of taro can yield a year round supply of food to support about 8 people. My estimate of pre-contact population is based on the assumption that the Hawaiians lived and farmed on the same land. This would mean that... A) as much as half the arable land would be occupied by non agricultural uses. B) in addition, at least half the land farmed would be 50% less productive in calories per acre than a lowland valley taro field. Item A) reduces the highest productive agricultural land to 17,185 acres. Item B) would support 8,593 acres with 8 people per acre, that would be 68,740 people. The remaining acres would be 50% less productive and therefore support 34,370 people. This would mean a total maximum Kauai population of about 100,000 people. If my estimate of maximum population is correct, that would mean that there would be about 1,500 people maximum in Kalalau Valley and 3,600 people in Waimea Valley when Cook landed there. Cook made a nose of those Hawaiians he could see onj landing. It came to about 500 people. Was only one in seven Waimeans seen by Cook? I doubt it so my sense is that the 100,000 population number for the island is high. However, I think it is not impossible that 100,000 people could be live on subsistence farming for some period of time prior to Cook's landing. In part because of its age, Kauai has been eroded into many flattened valleys. Due to a number of factors it is also blessed with an abundance of rain when compared with other Hawaiian islands. I am going to apply the same productivity analysis to the other islands. My guesstimate is that Kauai will prove to be higher than average in population density and therefore the total population of the chain will be closer to a half million than the one million that UH Professor David Stannard postulates (see article below). If this estimate is about right, that means that if you include the tourists and visitor population with the residents living here now, there are about as many people on Kauai today as there were when Cook landed over 225 years ago. So, if you take exception with my estimate, have more information, or another way of looking at pre-contact Hawaiian population, please email me. I think this is an important subject because it relates to not only what happened in the past on Kauai, but what the potential is in the future. It should impact our planning goals. |
History of population on Kauai
By Juan Wilson on 30 January 2004 -
Detail of "The Battle at Nu`Uanu Pau", on Oahu in 1795, by artist and scholar Herb Kawainui Kane
| After cruising the internet for information about pre-contact Native Hawaiian population estimates I came across what might be the source of the recent higher estimates for population of Hawaiians prior to Cook's Landing at Waimea, Kauai in 1775. The source is from a computer website at the University of Hawaii Kapiolani Community College Microbiology Department created by John Berestecky. The source file is an interview with David Stannard, UH American Studies Professor. The subject of the interview is a book Stannard wrote, published in 1989 by UH Social Science Research Institute, and titled "Before the Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact". The book postulates that eye witness Hawaiian population estimates (principally Captain Cook's and King's) were vastly smaller than the actual population. Cook's journals indicate that his estimate of Kauai population at 30,000 and King's island chain wide estimate 400,000 people. Subsequent scholars has thought King's numbers too high and using varying techniques have driven that number downward to a widely accepted range of 100,000 to 300,000. Stannard's book citizens King's and subsequent scholars work and concludes that there were 1,000,000 people in the Hawaiian chain in1775. There may be weaknesses to some scholars effort. Fortunately there are some records of how previous estimates were taken. Cook seems to have counted numbers at Waimea when he landed. Estimated numbers of communities of substantial size observed and extrapolated his results across all the island. King, on the other hand, adjusted his number to 400,000 with an estimate that 25% of the islands shore and mauka were uninhabited. Stannard's are as weak as any I have read about. Stannard took the contemporary population of Honolulu and spreads it over the largely rural central and northern shore areas and was able to maintain the population density of the settled areas of the north shore of Oahu. He argues that since you could fit them in they were their. I have not yet read "Before the Horror", but the interview seems to indicate that this technique (and we hope others) were extrapolated to arrive at Stannard's one million Hawaiian population estimate. Stannard refers to documentation that indicates that only 50,000 Hawaiians were left by 1875 after the epidemics introduced by contact with westerners wiped out large numbers of people. THis contrast of 1,000,000 people reduced to 50,000 by the indifference and cruelty of westerners tells us the true horror of the results. Yes there was indifference and cruelty; I would add there was selfishness and greed too. The higher the contrast in these numbers, the greater the crime. The Black Plague and other epidemics in Europe were due to contact with eastern micro-organisms. Stannard agrees with conventional wisdom that between the years 1350 and 1450 the bubonic plague reduced the population of Europe by half . If syphilis, mumps and other diseases destroyed half the Hawaiians by 1875; then the conventional wisdom lower estimate of 100,000 people in the islands would be reasonable. If 80% of Hawaiians were destroyed by European diseases then King's number of 400,000 Hawaiians would be reasonable. That's a lot of devastation without having to pave north Oahu suburbia over 1775 Hawaiian Islands. More later. |
What Population is Right for Kauai? By Juan Wilson on 4 January 2004 - A conversation with a friend about ancient Hawaiian society had me doubting what I will call an "Island Legend". Island Legends, like the urban variety, pass from person to person without much question. Their mobility rests on their ability to thrill and amaze the listener with the tale. I suspect another reason these legends persist is that they fulfill an agenda or represent a world view in some way.
Early Hawaiian Agriculture
SUBHEAD: Research determines acreage Hawaiians used for growing.
By Helen Altonn 21 December 2009 in the Star Bulletin -
(http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20091221_early_ag_lands_identified.html)
Image above: Wetland taro growing in Hanalei Valley on Kauai, Hawaii. From http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo448684.htm
Combining technology and traditional archaeology, scientists have identified thousands of acres of land farmed by early Hawaiians.
By Helen Altonn 21 December 2009 in the Star Bulletin -
(http://www.starbulletin.com/news/20091221_early_ag_lands_identified.html)
Image above: Wetland taro growing in Hanalei Valley on Kauai, Hawaii. From http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo448684.htm
Combining technology and traditional archaeology, scientists have identified thousands of acres of land farmed by early Hawaiians.
The findings also have implications for crop self-sufficiency in Hawaii -- that is, the possibility of ending the need for agricultural imports.
"At the peak of Hawaiian population, there were perhaps a million people," said Samuel M. Gon III, ecologist, cultural adviser and senior scientist with The Nature Conservancy. "It takes thousands and thousands of acres to feed all those people. Where was all that farmland?"
He said scientists began collaborating to find the answer to that question and the findings have broad implications for anthropology and conservation biology.
Early Hawaiian language newspapers referred to agricultural systems that aren't known today, either because they were abandoned, destroyed by sugar and pineapple cultivation or "they're in places where no one has looked," the researchers said.
They compared results of the computer models with what was known from more than 100 years of archaeological research to learn what has been lost.
The computerized model indicated a massive part of Kau on Hawaii island was suited for Hawaiian dryland agriculture -- thousands of acres above the South Point wind generator farm and below Mamalahoa Highway, according to the Conservancy news release.
Researchers expanded a project that began in the Kohala region to the entire Island chain, using so-called Geographic Information Systems modeling to see where early Hawaiians did dryland and wetland agriculture.
The technology could be used to determine the best habitats to grow rare plants, Gon said. The findings also suggest "we can wean our reliance on food from the outside world," he said.
A vast dryland farming system that grew sweet potatoes had already been discovered in the Kohala project with two former Honolulu residents as principal investigators: Peter Vitousek, a Stanford University ecologist, and Patrick Kirch of the University of California at Berkeley. Also participating was Thegn N. Ladefoged of New Zealand's University of Auckland.
The three joined with Gon, soil scientist Oliver A. Chadwick of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and environmental scientist Anthony S. Hartshorn of Arizona State's School of Earth and Space Exploration to apply GIS modeling across the state.
Their work is described in the Conservancy news release and in a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science entitled "Opportunities and constraints for intensive agriculture in the Hawaiian archipelago prior to European contact."
"We went to Google Earth to take a look," said Vitousek, who is familiar with the network of earthen and stone walls in Hawaiian dryland agriculture. He recognized the images on the screen. "There it was! You could see the walls. They're unbelievable," he said.
What was surprising in the GIS modeling, Gon said in an interview, was the coupling of taro or kalo with landscape flat enough and wet enough for its biology.
"The match between where kalo can grow and was grown was remarkable," he said. "Wow! Everywhere it could be grown pretty much it was being grown."
Kirch, an anthropologist who has done extensive research throughout Hawaii, said he was "blown away" by the huge extent of wet taro lands, especially on Kauai. "I really didn't have a clue it was so extensive. ... It was an incredible breadbasket of wet taro lands," he said in an interview.
The researchers said they were shocked at the extent of dry and wetland agriculture and the distribution, with dryland farming mostly on the younger islands of Maui and the Big Island and wetland agriculture on the older islands of Oahu and Kauai.
"People think the islands are the same -- that Hawaiians grew taro and sweet potatoes -- but they really are different up and down the archipelago," Kirch said.
"This has all kinds of implications, not just for the economic system in ancient Hawaii but the political system as well," he said, pointing out that dryland systems, subject to drought and harsh conditions, wouldn't be as productive as wet taro lands.
"I can see why (Maui chief) Kahekili and (Hawaii chief) Kamehameha wanted to conquer Oahu and Kauai to get rich taro lands. It's real interesting when you look at what was going on politically at the time of contact."
See also:
File Format: PDF - "The Transformation of the landscape in Waimea, Hawaii: Pre-Human..."
https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/7089/2/uhm_ma_3048_r.pdf
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)