Dash of Calabash

Lingle-Aiona Initiatives 2008, recently published in the Honolulu Advertiser are available on-line using this link. This post relates to protecting our food suply, one of 14 initiative areas contained in the document. Some initiatives new, some are recycled or continued from prior years.

Protecting our food supply - covers land, water, food safety and invasive species (Description of initiative included in first link above, but only the only bill listed is HHL-01(08)/HB3126/SB3048 which seeks to increase the loan ceiling from $50K to $200K for farm and ranch operations on Hawaiian Home Lands)

Read about winners Al Gore, Sam Zell, Jamie Diamond and Steve Jobs; and losers John Borwne, John Mackey, Charles Prince, James Cayne and Conrad Black.

Click here for the Honolulu Advertiser article

Institute for Policy Innovation, TechBytes - 01/24/2008

In a speech earlier this week, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps outlined his vision for how the wireless phone market ought to work, as opposed to how it works today.

Of course, it’s not the role of government regulators to be designing markets, in some measure because when they do typically their reach exceeds their grasp.

Commissioner Copps is decidedly unhappy that the current state of the wireless market doesn’t live up to his imagined ideal of how it should work. But, in fact, a close look at Copps’ address reveals that, his imagination is a government control — FCC control — his control, his dream. Copps simply thinks that the wireless market ought to work exactly like — the Internet. But it ought to work like the wireless router business, too. Oh, and it also ought to work like the old monopoly wireline network used to work.

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The 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey by Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich ranks Honolulu the 4th least affordable housing market in survey of (227) markets in the United States, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Click here for the report. Only San Francisco, Salinas and Los Angeles in California were rated less affordable.

Last year in the same report, Honolulu was ranked 3rd least affordable, behind San Diego and Los Angeles. Honolulu’s affordability rating was the same both years, 10.3. This translates to a median single-family home price 10.3 times the median household income, using third quarter data. Click here to see last year’s report.

By Rachel Kipp
(Wilmington, Del.) News Journal

In Room 114 at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at the University of Delaware, it takes more than reaching over and pressing the snooze button to silence the alarm clock. In addition to bleating an ear-splitting tune at the designated wake-up time, the gadget jumps off the dresser and hides in a corner, forcing sleepy users to get out of bed.

The showerhead in the bathroom has 70 percent stronger water pressure than the average fixture, but uses 70 percent less water.

When visitors arrive, there’s no looking through a peephole. Instead of glass, the hole in the door contains a digital video camera connected to an LCD screen mounted on the inside of the door.

Room 114 is unique for now, but researchers at the University of Delaware hope it won’t always be that way. They’re using the experimental “guest room of the future” to test new technology in a real hotel environment.

Read the entire article from the Honolulu Advertiser here

Minnesota’s corn ethanol industry blends subsidies, politics and lobbying

By: Ron Way

LAKE CRYSTAL, MINN. - Brad LeMay owns the Humphrey Street Grill in Lake Crystal, a southwestern Minnesota farm community that for years tried to build a new high school. Early last year, that new school opened after voters earlier approved the long-sought referendum.

LeMay credits a nearby ethanol refinery for the voters’ change of heart.

“It’s sure helped our business,” LeMay said of the 52-million-gallon refinery, adding that POET Biorefining’s plant brought enough financial security to the community to allow voters to give their approval in 2005, the same year the plant was built.

POET’s Lake Crystal facility is one 17 ethanol plants in Minnesota and one of 134 that dot the U.S. countryside, annually consuming a fifth of the nation’s corn crop - and nearly a quarter of Minnesota’s - to produce 7.2 billion gallons of ethanol (the very same “white lightning” distilled by moonshiners of lore).

The domestically-produced “biofuel” - seen as an antidote to U.S. oil-import vulnerability - is one of Minnesota’s biggest booming industries.

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By: Josh Friedman

Netflix, seeking not to be bypassed in the transition to digital distribution of movies, removed limits on how many films and TV shows subscribers can watch over the Internet.

The move comes just as Apple Inc. is set to unveil plans for users to rent major Hollywood movies online through its iTunes Store.

Read the rest of the Honolulu Advertiser article here

By Nancy Trejos

WASHINGTON - Michael Cheng and his wife, Nicole, each have four credit cards in their wallets. A Post-it note on the top left corner of each card lets them know which one to use for what.

The Chase rewards card is for groceries, gasoline and drugstore purchases. The Chase business card is for gas stations, home improvement and office-supply stores and restaurants. The Discover card is for restaurants and movies. The Farm Bureau Bank card is for everything else.

Read the entire article from Honolulu Advertiser here

Hawai’i ranked 40th out of 50 states in a new economic competitiveness index released by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston.

The annual index, which has been published since 2001, is aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses in economic performance across the country.

Utah, Massachusetts and Colorado were the top three states in the survey. Hawai’i ranked 42nd in 2006.

The competitiveness index is based on 42 indicators that evaluate government and fiscal policy, security, infrastructure, human resources, technology, business incubation, openness and environmental policy.

You can see the entire Beacon Hill report (which is currently on the home page) at http://www.beaconhill.org.

H.L. Mencken is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century. Here are some of his quotes on politics, democracy, government and elections.

1. Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods (see cartoon above).
2. A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
3. A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
4. Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
5. Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
6. Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
7. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
8. Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
9. If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.