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In the immediately preceding post I mentioned this from California:

California's Legislative Analyst non-partisan office said "the scale of the deficits is so vast that we know of no way that the Legislature, the Governor, and voters can avoid making additional, very difficult choices about state priorities."

One of the painful large cuts will be to their flagship University of California campuses. Liberal thinking may be a fine pursuit but liberal spending isn't, no matter how good the socialist justification may be for it because in the long term society winds up being worse off.

Stimulus, National Budget, California and Honolulu

Abraham Lincoln once asked an audience how many legs a dog has, if you called the tail a leg? When the audience said "five," Lincoln corrected them, saying that the answer was four. "The fact that you call a tail a leg does not make it a leg."

That same principle applies today. The fact that politicians call something a "stimulus" does not make it a stimulus. The fact that they call something a "jobs bill" does not mean there will be more jobs.

So starts Thomas Sowell's recent opinion titled A stimulus or a sedative? He is the Rose and Milton Friedman senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

His conclusion is that stimulus jobs are fake and counter-productive. And very costly. As a result the forecast from the General Accounting Office (GAO) for the U.S. budget is both pessimistic and alarming. And this is before the Trillion Dollar health care "reform" has been accounted for.

I quote two paragraphs from GAO's The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020.

• Accumulating deficits are pushing federal debt to significantly higher levels. CBO projects that total debt will reach $8.8 trillion by the end of 2010. At 60 percent of GDP, that would be the highest level since 1952. Under current laws and policies, CBO’s projections show that level climbing to 67% by 2020. As a result, interest payments on the debt are poised to skyrocket; the government’s spending on net interest will triple between 2010 and 2020, increasing from $207 billion to $723 billion.
• Beyond the 10-year projection period, growth of spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will speed up from its already rapid rate. To keep federal deficits and debt from reaching levels that would substantially harm the economy, lawmakers would have to significantly increase revenues, decrease projected spending, or enact some combination of the two.

Of course "significantly increase revenues" means "heavy new taxes."

The future is already "here" for California. In November 2009 California's Legislative Analyst non-partisan office said "the scale of the deficits is so vast that we know of no way that the Legislature, the Governor, and voters can avoid making additional, very difficult choices about state priorities."

In light of all these, Honolulu is doing the worst thing possible to prepare for this storm of deficits. It plans to sink several billion dollars on an unproductive rail investment. Since the City administration has lost its marbles about this, it is imperative that fiscally responsible people are elected at both City and State. I look forward to this responsibility at the City level.

Jobs, Priorities and Solutions for Oahu

Concerned citizens should demand a list of specific action items from their next mayor. Here is my list.

Disaster Resilience ... Where's the plan to organize and distribute machinery to handle poles, trees, power and debris? How can we provide help to neighborhoods when vital streets are blocked with fallen trees and poles? Why are key streets not fitted with underground utilities and low height trees?

Second Access for Waianae ... Farrington Hwy. alone is a death trap for this large community. What's the evacuation plan for a 20-30 minute arrive time of tsunami from Big Island?

Trash Management ... This is a huge issue. At a minimum we need better sorting, more reuse and more exportation since containers go to mainland mostly empty.

Crime and Safety ... We need to focus on hard drugs, and the protection of our young.

Highway Accident Investigation ... We need to train police to open lanes in under 60 min.

Parks and the Homeless ... Use old and decommissioned TheBus as TheShelter at some parks. Park upkeep and modernization is long overdue.

Planning and Permitting ... DPP has a poor reputation. It needs to become fast and friendly.

Water "Scam" ... Oahu has enough water for about five million people but old laws allow for its (ab)use.

Energy ... Our best bets are with wind, Navy nuclear submarines, and an offshore nuclear plant.

Sustainability ... We need to focus on fishing, agriculture, and ocean transportation for long term survival of one million people in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Traffic and Transit ... Build the recommendations of the UH Congestion Study.

Sewers ... We pay heavy fees but progress is slow. An immediate audit is essential, followed by a plan to get all updates completed within 10 years.

Roads ... Hasty repaving to collect votes is a waste of money. We need a plan for pavement rehabilitation to take us from 3rd worst in nation to top third in 10 years.

What is the bottom line of this list? Many new, good and local jobs. Important projects get done. Quality of life improves. Tourist appeal improves. Economy thrives!

Oahu Railway and Land (OR&L)

The Oahu Railway and Land (OR&L) provides a nearly continuous 40 ft. wide corridor for rail transportation between Nanakuli and the west side of the Honolulu International Airport (HIA). Dr. Kioni Dudley of Makakilo, among others on Oahu have been questioning why such an obvious path for rail was largely ignored from any serious analysis and environmental assessment.

Thanks to the Star Bulletin some of the points and counterpoints are beginning to emerge.

• Rail route, agenda scrutinized (Feb 15, 2010)
• Using old OR&L path for rail not practical (Feb 25, 2010)
• Old OR&L route defended for rail transit (Mar 07, 2010)

Even if the counterpoints are significant, the City did fail to take a careful look at OR&L. As member of the 2006 Transit Advisory Task Force that examined the city's Alternatives Analysis, I can attest that OR&L was not the subject of analysis.

As one can see in the map below, the rail path of OR&L is extensive and it reaches to within a few miles of downtown. It provides a platform for light rail development. Light rail service can occur at a small fraction of the proposed fully elevated multibillion dollar system, with similar or better results in ridership. Its speed may be lower compared to a fully elevated system but it can be designed with fewer stations and larger parking lots.


Between the east end of HIA and downtown, the new passenger OR&L can operate on the sides of the Nimitz Viaduct which is a proposed project for a narrow reversible elevated highway connecting H-1 Fwy. at Keehi Interchange to downtown. This project passed environmental reviews in the late 1990s and was mothballed by Governor Lingle at the beginning of her first term. However, the Nimitz Viaduct re-emerged in 2008 as a desirable project in the Highway Modernization Program of the state DOT.

The Nasty Pothole Has a New Suitor: The Smart Phone

Vehicles of all sizes and their passengers and cargo suffer daily from potholes. Particularly in Honolulu which is bottom ranked for quality of roads. Just take a look on Ward Avenue between Kinau and King Streets.

The Nasty Pothole was the focus of a popular TV and radio commercial spot by a major auto insurance company.

Honolulu has a pothole hotline, so the regular phone was a long time suitor of the pothole. Now camera and GPS loaded smart phones present a formidable new suitor.

See Click Fix Dot Com provides the means to instantly notify authorities and other motorists about nasty potholes with a picture and exact geo-location.

Yet another driver distraction, but if we were top ranked for road quality, like most cities in Florida, which has a similar hot, humid and wet environment, we wouldn't have to use a smart phone app for potholes.