Musings: Bad Taste

Democracy is alive and well on Kauai, as evidenced by the spate of candidates running for the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative board. Unfortunately, quantity doesn't equal quality.

Here's the line up: Former board member Stu Burley and incumbents David Iha, Phil Tacbian and Peter Yukimura are the good ole boys picked by the Board's nominating committee. The other seven qualified by getting 35 signatures on a petition. Yes, it's that easy. They are Adam Asquith, Neal Chantara, Daniel Erickson, DQ Jackson, Jonathan Jay, Chuck Lasker and Jimmy Trujillo.

Adam and Jonathan circulated the petition for the smart meter opt-out fee vote, which ends on Saturday. Adam was also on the losing side of the last member vote over the Free Flow consulting contract. He sued KIUC twice over smart meters, and on Wednesday lost his bid for an injunction to stop KIUC from collecting the opt-out fee pending the vote. 

Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe found that Adam had met none of the criteria needed for an injunction, and should have included the Public Utilities Commission in his motion. “The law is clear that this is not an issue to be challenged in court,” she said.

So the co-op burned well over $20,000 in legal fees on Adam's pro se petulance. The guy's got a Ph.D. Seems he could have read the law if he was intent on representing himself.

I can't knock Adam, Jonathan and Jimmy Trujillo for running — JJ for a second time. As relentless critics of the KIUC board and management, it's good to see them engage in the process at the beginning, rather than blowing off board meetings and PUC proceedings and then bitching about what went down.

Still, it does leave a bad taste to have Adam and JJ announce their candidacy after a lawsuit and petition drive — actions that gave them considerable newspaper publicity.

The three of them also have benefitted from their talk shows on KKCR, where smart meters and KIUC are regularly hammered hard. While it appears all three are taking leave from their shows, as is proper while campaigning — though Jimmy and Felicia Cowden kept hosting, even while seeking appointment to the County Council — they've already used our community-funded radio to further their political aims. This gives them an unfair advantage over other candidates.

And they're still working it. Though Jonathan didn't host his show, he did call in to complain about KIUC spokesman Jim Kelly removing his “Vote No” signs from utility poles. JJ demanded a public apology. But as Jim pointed out, it's against the law to post any signs on utility poles because they're a hazard to linemen. He carries pliers in his truck and removes them whenever he sees them.

There's irony alongside the immaturity. JJ, Jimmy and Adam have all banged KIUC for a lack of transparency and democracy. Yet as Ed Coll points out in the “KKCR Crisis in Demagoguery” series on his new blog, our community radio station has an abysmal track record in both areas.

But since the three talk show hosts benefit from the station's dysfunction, they haven't said a word against it. Jimmy even tried to smear Ed, who is married to Board member Carol Bain, for bringing it up at all, writing on Facebook: “i wondered if Ed posted because of his relationship to the board of KIUC.”

Yes, let's attack and attempt to silence any messenger who might make us, god forbid, look at ourselves.

Speaking of which, it's been amusing to me to watch more of the hypocrisy in action from the pro-2491 crowd. Like the one rabid anti-pesticide/GMO activist who is a chain smoker and lives behind Princeville's park, apparently blissfully ignorant of the chemicals applied in her neighborhood. Or the beekeeper who hates poison in the westside fields, but thinks nothing of tossing it around when she gets rats.

Or blogger Andy Parx, who viciously maligned farmers for trying to orchestrate a — gasp — letter-writing campaign to the Star-Advertiser, even as he actively engages in the same lobbying efforts himself via Facebook.

I guess it's because they alone are good and above reproach, and everybody who doesn't think exactly like them is bad?

Which leads me to a little aloha Friday treat for readers: a link to a classic Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” I'm sure some of you will find more than a few parallels with the situation here on Kauai. Just substitute any number of nouns for monsters, and some of our own players for the cast.

One of my favorite lines: Any guy who’d spend his time lookin’ up at the sky early in the morning—well, there’s something wrong with that kind of person.

I won't give away the great ending, but I'll share Rod Serling's closing comments from the script:

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices—to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy. A thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children . . . and the children yet unborn, and the pity of it is . . . that these things cannot be confined to . . . The Twilight Zone!