Musings: Dreaming

The moon that I watched rise, pink-orange, from gray seas as I dodged bufo big as boulders on the bike path, chased by rain, but never fully caught, was still up this morning, bold white in the west, having traveled across the sky as I journeyed through a landscape of pleasant dreams.

What is it about rich people that sparks all kinds of dreams among we common folk about benevolence and charity and hand-outs to fund the dreamers' dreams?

I first became aware of that dynamic when I managed the multi-million-dollar Kalihiwai estate and watched people's eyes light up as they visited the property and invariably got to thinking about how they might grab a piece of that action.

Except, as Pink Floyd would sing, “But if you ask for a rise it's no surprise that they're giving none away.....”

I bring it up because I recently came across an article I'd written for the April 2001 issue of Hawaii Investor, after AOL/Time Warner billionaire Steve Case spent $26 million to buy Grove Farm, one of the largest private landholdings on Kauai.

The editors — not I — titled it “Kauai's Bright Light,” because it was still a time when, as I wrote:

The island's most active minds are spinning scenarios on how he might raise Grove Farm from the dead and maybe spread a little of his wealth. Some are hoping Case will develop a high-tech educational center on his new property. Others want him to carve out 2,900 acres at Mahaulepu as a wilderness preserve. Still others are eagerly anticipating an increase in Grove Farm's philanthropy.

Much of the optimism was predicated on Case's family ties to Kauai, with former Planning Director Dee Crowell and Beryl Blaich, director of Malama Mahaulepu, believing he would have “some sensitivity to Kauai and the Kauai lifestyle,” as Dee phrased it.

All along, though, longtime Grove Farm President David Pratt cautioned that the expectations might not be warranted, saying the firm was unlikely to veer from the course it had set years ago, which included a resort development on at Mahauelepu:

“[I]t's a very important and valuable piece of our property,” Pratt says. “We would like to do something with that property besides just giving it away. Somewhere out there is a workable compromise where everybody gets something, including Grove Farm.”

Ron Kouchi, then Council chair, was the only one to see the writing on the wall:

We were already blipping on the radar screens in terms of people coming here and bying land. All over Hawaii, that's where the big money has been coming from — the dot.coms. That's why it's important for us to have our dreams out there, to be clear in articulating what we need and want, so we can make sure the people who buy share our values and care about Kauai in the long haul.

So what has been the reality in the14 years since Case bought Grove Farm? Well, nostalgia certainly hasn't been a factor, considering how Steve never even fixed up the family home, which is falling apart over near Kukui Grove.

Then there was the way they evicted all those longtime families from Koloa Camp in order to build affordable homes, rushing everybody to get out for a project that has since lagged.

And let's not forget the big sale of raw land at Kipu to another billionaire, tobacco magnate Brad Kelley.

Which was followed by leasing the important ag lands in Mahaulepu valley to Hawaii Dairy Farms, a quasi-philanthropic venture financed by yet another billionaire, Pierre Omidyar. That proposal has quickly built up a solid block of mostly NIMBY opponents.

Ironically, a dairy would have been one of the dreams articulated back in 2001, when we valued agriculture on this island and realized the choice was between growing crops and growing mostly upscape homes and resorts. That was before activists opposed to the seed/chem companies decried all agriculture as toxic, evil, industrial and unsustainable, aside from a handful of equally unsustainable organic farms that depend on the mainland for cheap "woofer" labor, fertilizers and inputs.

Back then, the county had also just adopted a two-year moratorium on ag subdivisions, while it supposedly “fixed” the law. But not before numerous fake ag subdivisions were approved, leading to the gentrification of ag land and the proliferation of high-end vacation rentals — most of them now grandfathered in, courtesy of Councilmen like Jay Furfaro and Tim Bynum.

So what are our dreams now? And are they any more real, or likely to be realized, than the pipe dreams we had about Steve Case and his benevolence?

Meanwhile, The Garden Island, in its warm, fuzzy, cloaked-in-aloha editorial on the Kauai Planning and Action Alliance's most recent report on community indicators, serves us just the tiniest hint of reality. Though curiously, it never actually reports on any of these issues:

The income gap increased on Kauai, resulting in a growing poverty rate of 12.9 percent. The number of children living in poverty increased to 18.3 percent.

• Child abuse and neglect cases increased sharply and the number of medically uninsured jumped.

“Somehow, we’re not meeting the needs of the lowest economic sector of our population,” [KPAA director Diane Zachary] said. “A lot of people still have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, so they have less time with their families.”

In other words, real life is getting harder for many locals on this island as mainlanders spin new dreams about pristine Kauai leading the global fight against GMOs, and everyone living happily ever after sustained solely by a "yarden."  

As a friend, a local boy now dead from ice and a broken heart, used to say:

All the newcomers have one dream about what Kauai should be. And the locals just mourn what was.

Musings: Face the Day

Lying in bed on this Scorpio full moon morning, reading about "unstoppable" ice melts, NASA's dire warnings about the climate-change-driven collapse of industrial society, ocean acidification already killing off marine life, made it kind of hard to want to get up.

But then the birds started singing and the day began anew and what choice do we ever have but to get up and face it? Or not. Which is the choice of many, with nearly half of Americans still in denial about climate change.

Walking the dogs, making coffee, tidying the kitchen, I reflected again on an email conversation I'd had with a young friend on Monday. He'd written:

I still think that all of us (if I can include myself in the mix) are failing at providing any real solution. What can we do and who can we support? But, is systemic change possible within our current system? Or is piecemeal resistance the answer? Or is the conclusion inevitably withdrawal (as Paul Kingsnorth so eloquently puts it?)

And he provided a link to an article Kingsnorth had published in Orion, on Dark Ecology. I was introduced to Kingsnorth last month, when a longtime friend and environmental activist sent me a link to a New York Times article with the misleading headline, “It's the end of the world as we know it...and he feels fine.”

Kingsnorth most definitely does not feel fine about our ecological woes. In fact, he urges folks to get real about what's going down:

We are living, he says, through the “age of ecocide,” and like a long-dazed widower, we are finally becoming sensible to the magnitude of our loss, which it is our duty to face.

I particularly resonated with Kingsnorth because we've both lost faith in political solutions and environmental activism, something I've been involved with for nearly 40 years:

“I had a lot of friends who were writing about climate change and doing a lot of good work on it,” he told me during a break from his festival duties. “I was just listening and looking at the facts and thinking: Wow, we are really screwed here. We are not going to stop this from happening.”

“You look at every trend that environmentalists like me have been trying to stop for 50 years, and every single thing had gotten worse. And I thought: I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit here saying: ‘Yes, comrades, we must act! We only need one more push, and we’ll save the world!’ I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it! So what do I do?”

Much of his recent writing has been devoted to fulminating against how environmentalism, in its crisis phase, draws adherents. Movements like Bill McKibben’s 350.org, for instance, might engage people, Kingsnorth told me, but they have no chance of stopping climate change. “I just wish there was a way to be more honest about that,” he went on, “because actually what McKibben’s doing, and what all these movements are doing, is selling people a false premise. They’re saying, ‘If we take these actions, we will be able to achieve this goal.’ And if you can’t, and you know that, then you’re lying to people. And those people . . . they’re going to feel despair.”

That sentiment was similarly well-expressed in an Adbuster's article that my email correspondent had also quoted:

“Big green NGOs present an ‘exciting’ semblance of resistance — a vapid shell that allows people who are grasping for meaning to sustain the illusion that they can really make a difference.  All they have to do is click here, sign there, watch a flashy video about an adventurous ‘direct action’ that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to stage, make bi-annual trips to the White House to really give that damn President a piece of their mind and pay their monthly tithes to their NGO of choice.  These NGOs market themselves as catalysts for what they love to refer to as ‘movements.’  By proposing simple and false solutions inside a framework of what’s been cleverly branded as ‘Peaceful Resistance,’ potential disruptors of the capitalist system are pacified, placated and rendered ineffective while simultaneously being led to believe that they are engaged in meaningful resistance to ‘save’ the planet.”

That's exactly the scenario that I've been watching play out here on Kauai over GMOs, replete with de rigueur direct actions, click and sign email campaigns, flashy videos and the despair that's lurking right around the corner when the reality comes home to roost: You cannot expect real change from corrupt people — and by this I don't just mean politicians, but ideologues and egoists — working within a corrupt system.

So no, I don't believe meaningful systemic change is possible within the current system. It's like trying to rehab a termite-infested house. But the system is built on beliefs, and beliefs can change, sometimes very rapidly. Most often, we see these changes occurring through the manipulation served up by advertising and increasingly, social media, and also by calamities, like natural disasters, war and epidemics.

They can also change — and to me, this is the preferable method — through an awakening, an “ah ha” shift in consciousness that broadens the view, changes the perspective, lifts the veil of illusion. That's my only "hope" for humanity changing course.

That, and people who understand natural systems, who know how to heal, produce, fix and make things, like the small-kine farmers and ranchers who have been so vilified of late by the aforementioned ideologues. People who care, like Sy Shim, who stopped by the other day to share ideas for a sports-related incentive program to help get people off drugs, an adopt-a-family approach to address homelessness. And communities. Not government, or agencies or politicians but every day people working together to directly resolve the issues in their neighborhoods.

As Kingsnorth wrote:

I’m not sure I know the answer. But I know there is no going back to anything. And I know that we are not headed, now, toward convivial tools. We are not headed toward human-scale development. This culture is about superstores, not little shops; synthetic biology, not intentional community; brushcutters, not scythes. This is a culture that develops new life forms first and asks questions later; a species that is in the process of, in the words of the poet Robinson Jeffers, “break[ing] its legs on its own cleverness.”

But there has to be something beyond despair too; or rather, something that accompanies it, like a companion on the road.

And so you get up, like the birds, and face the day, singing. Or not.

Musings: On the Table

With Secretary of State John Kerry being asked to weigh in on the legal status of the Hawaiian nation, will the U.S. finally address its hypocrisy in how it deals with independence movements in its own back yard?

I mean, just last week Kerry was denouncing a planned Ukraine independence referendum as “bogus” and said it would not be recognized by the West. Meanwhile, he hasn't said squat about the Hawaiian Roll Commission, a state-supported initiative that is busily registering folks to create a Hawaiian nation — a process that many independence activists have denounced as bogus.

But trustees for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a state entity that has bankrolled the Roll Commission and given it political and administrative support, want to keep sweeping the bigger question under the rug.

And that question is this: Is the Hawaiian nation still a sovereign entity, even though it's been claimed by the United States? If it is, what impact does that have on legislation like the Statehood Act and the bill that created the Roll Commission?

As has been widely reported, OHA Trustees quickly rescinded a letter that OHA CEO Kamana’opono Crabbe sent to Kerry, asking for a legal opinion on the sovereign status of Hawaii.

Crabbe, to his credit, did not back down, and instead defended his decision to seek the ruling as being in the best interest of the beneficiaries that OHA is supposed to serve. Kauai Trustee Dan Ahuna withdrew his initial support for the letter to rescind, and other Trustees are reportedly considering doing the same.

Though OHA Chair Colette Machado has tried to pass the huhu off as a “breach of aloha,” Crabbe's bold move has finally brought the core issue to the forefront. And one aspect of that makes OHA understandably skittish. As Crabbe identified it in his letter to Kerry:

“If the Hawaiian Kingdom continues to exist and the sole-executive agreements are binding on the United States, have the members of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission, Trustees and staff of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs incurred criminal liability under international law?”

That is a question Machado most definitely does not want answered, seeing as how she and OHA have repeatedly aligned with the State of Hawaii and federal legislators who support the “nation within a nation model” laid out in the Akaka Bill. OHA also has given the Roll Commission office space and nearly $4 million in operating funds, with another $3 million allocated.

The Native Hawaiian Roll Commission was created by the state Legislature. Gov. Abercrombie, a staunch supporter of the Akaka Bill, signed it into law in 2011 as Act 195. It established a governor-appointed commission charged with determining just who is a Native Hawaiian. The goal was to create a roll of persons eligible to participate in a process that could lead to the formation of a self-governing entity. Since then, about 130,000 persons have been registered under the Kana`iolowalu process.

From the onset, however, Act 195 met resistance from those who objected to the state, which they view as illegal, creating the framework for a native governing entity. At the Commission's first meeting, Laulani Teale, an Oahu community activist and cultural peacemaker, testified:

“As you all must know, there are many who stand in very strong opposition to this process, just as many of us oppose federal recognition as a means to sovereignty. I believe that we all know that the strong-spirited warriors of the independence movement, like our kupuna before us, and many of whom have been fighting against the occupation and colonization of Hawaiʻi for decades, will not change their views, nor participate in a 'roll' under any circumstances. These are the front-line warriors whose voices and actions have brought us to where we are today. I think we all know that any form of nation built without these voices would simply not be pono.”

Former Gov. John Waihee, who heads the Commission, has dismissed concerns about undue state influence:

“It's not like the State of Hawaii's forming this government for us. What the government is doing is recognizing we are the indigenous people and giving us the opportunity, through the kindness of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, to have the means to go and do that, to ultimately form our own government.”

Commissioner Na`alehu Anthony previously told me the panel is basing its work on a premise shared by many Hawaiian nationals — that Hawaiians never relinquished their inherent sovereignty. It stems from the fact that Liliuokalani refused to give up her throne during America's illegal overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. As he noted:

"I think we're all on a similar path. It's just a question of how we get there."

But many are concerned that federal recognition is the one and only goal, which would extinguish long-held dreams of resurrecting an independent Hawaiian nation.

It seems reasonable and long overdue to ask Kerry to respond to the core question, seeing as how the U.S. takes positions on independence movements across the globe. Let the U.S. publicly and openly state its legal rationale for colonizing Hawaii, for all the world to see.

It's time to lay this issue on the table, regardless of whether Colette Machado or the OHA Trustees want to deal with it. 

Musings: Squandered Momentum

It's election season, which means it's time for another round of fear-mongering. And Hawaii SEED/GMO Free Kauai is only too happy to oblige, this time hosting a statewide tour of anti-atrazine researcher Dr. Tyrone Hayes.

In an amazing stroke of coincidence — if you believe in such things — the tour is being held this week, when the state Department of Health is due to release the results of its statewide samplings for pesticides. I've heard that atrazine was found in Kekaha and glyphosate in Hanalei, though the exact locations and quantities have not yet been publicly disclosed.

Still, the discovery of any amount is bound to illicit fear, especially when Hayes so expertly fans the flames. I can still recall the Facebook response of a peroxided, chain-smoking “A'ole GMO” activist when I pointed out the atrazine found at Waimea Canyon School was in the parts per trillion, well below federal standards:

“There shouldn't be any amount allowed,” she snarled.

I agree completely on the desirability of a pristine planet, and understand that folks want the freedom to choose their poisons. 

Still, we must face the reality that we are all responsible for the toxins generated in delivering a lifestyle that allows people to drive diesel-powered school buses for a living, buy health food shipped in from California, fly/drive to Lihue for a “let the people decide” charter amendment rally, engage in social media on smart phones that use toxic heavy metals, and plug into electricity generated by burning oil so they can watch the well-funded Vandana Shiva utter a videotaped message on the “power of money to destroy a democracy.”

Vandana also blithely delivered this line:

There is no excuse for a birth defect rate that is 10-fold more than the national average and for cancer rates to be higher.

Except cancer rates in Hawaii are declining, as is typical across the nation, and Kauai rates are significantly lower than the statewide average. As for birth defects, the most recent report — which is definitely out of date, ending in 2005 — shows Hawaii either on par with or below the national average. It also shows there are many factors associated with birth defects, including meth use, which means it's not so easy to finger just one source, like pesticides, without extensive epidemiological studies.

I keep hearing that Kauai pediatricians have observed an elevated incidence of rare defects here. Who are these doctors? Where is their data? Has it been forwarded to the DOH? Please share it with all of us if it exists.

Of course, keeping it all shadowy makes it ideal for the fear-mongerers.

Speaking of shadowy, it seems the state Ethics Commission is checking into “grassroots” groups like Hawaii SEED, which may have violated the state law requiring “organizations that spend more than five hours lobbying in a six-month period to submit a report listing their expenditures and contributions.”

Jeri Di Pietro, president of Hawaii SEED, is one of those who has failed to submit a disclosure form, though her group certainly devoted far more than five hours to lobbying the Council for Bill 2491 last year and lobbying the Legislature on labeling and other issues this year. I guess Jeri just can't see the glaring disconnect between her actions and her group's repeated demands for disclosure and transparency by others.

Meanwhile, anti-GMO activist Dustin Barca has announced he's running against Bernard Carvalho Jr., giving us a choice between a singing mayor and a surfing-fighting mayor. If that choice is still too hard, consider this: who would you rather have as managing director, Nadine Nakamura or Fern Anuenue?

As the Hawaii Independent reports:

For Barca, this means moving towards greater economic self-reliance and regenerative agriculture especially; addressing land-use policies that have driven kama`aina families from their homes and blocked local access to important cultural and recreational areas; and developing new policies that limit growth while ensuring that dollars spent locally benefit local families.

Like any candidate, he's got some great rhetoric going. Still, in all the years we've been dealing with tourism, access, agriculture, iwi kupuna and land use issues I've never once seen or heard Dustin chime in, though he claims he's been involved in politics for his entire adult life. 

But hey, it's more media publicity for Dustin, just like the anti-GMO fight, which garnered him a few write-ups in the surfer mags. Oh, and gee, whatta ya know, he already got coverage in Surfer Today, which offers this quote:

"I see Kauai as a farming epicenter, where food production is number one. By reversing our 90% food import with 90% food production, I envision local agriculture and access to healthy foods for all of our island's residents," adds Dustin.

Visions are great, Dustin, and we all especially love that one. But what are your actual solutions for reversing that trend? Please outline how you plan to achieve this when it has eluded minds far better than yours for decades.

I'm not sure why folks are so keen to turn the election into a referendum on the GMO issue when they don't have the votes to pull it off.  But maybe it will take a stunning, crushing defeat to deflate some of the giant egos in the movement.

Unfortunately, they're squandering the movement's momentum and enthusiasm on unelectable candidates, flawed laws and unconstitutional charter amendments. Which means there won't be any juice left for actually embarking on meaningful, legal solutions to the environmental problems facing this island. Much less addressing the issue of pesticide use, as some of us would like.

And so, ironically, they perpetuate the very same status quo they seek to change.

Musings: Dreck from the Depos, Part III

During a recent meeting, when the County Council was preparing to vote on a settlement of Councilman Tim Bynum's lawsuit against Kauai County, former Prosecutor Shaylene Iseri and planning supervisor Sheilah Miyake, Councilman Ross Kagawa made a startling announcement: He was planning to file an ethics complaint against Councilman Mason Chock.

Ross felt it was a conflict for Mason to vote on the settlement after Tim had voted to appoint Mason to the Council in that dirty, screwy process to secure a vote to override the mayor's veto of Bill 2491. The seed companies are now challenging the appointment process in their lawsuit to invalidate the bill.

But in reading the deposition of deputy prosecutor Gary Nelson, it seems there was another potential conflict in the case. In this excerpt, attorney Dan Hempey is asking Gary about Tim's zoning violation, which was sent to the Office of Prosecuting Attorney for criminal prosecution. Tim was charged with two misdemeanor zoning violations, which were later dismissed.

Q. How was [Councilman] Mel Rapozo involved?

A. When I got the box that had all of the cases, there was a spreadsheet that had been done by Mel Rapozo, and it had just kind of a listing of all of the -- all of the cases. It was just like the names of all of the people, and then their TMK numbers, and then the current status, whether or not they were moving towards compliance or whether it was going to be resolved within the planning department.  It was color coded, and there were some that were coded for prosecution like there was no resolution.  It's time to prosecute. So he had done some sort of summary.

Q. Okay. And do you remember if Bynum's was coded for prosecution?

A. Yes.

Q. Was it?

A. It was.

Q. Okay. And do you understand from an employment or contractual perspective, how Mel Rapozo would have put this -- why Mel Rapozo would have put this spreadsheet together and provided it to you?

A. My understanding was that he was an investigator with the office of the prosecuting attorney at some point. While he was an inspector, he did have the files.

Q. Okay. So before you got there, your understanding he was an investigator for the prosecutor's office?

A. Yeah.

As I previously reported:

Mel's company, M&P Legal Support Services LLC, was paid $43,026.20 to serve subpoenas for the Office of Prosecuting Attorney between July 2009 and May 2012, according to a review of public records.

In looking back at that post, I also noticed that Council watchers Glenn Mickens and Ken Taylor — both staunch Shay supporters — had filed a Board of Ethics complaint against County Attorney Al Castillo, claiming he'd helped Prosecutor Justin Kollar (his former deputy) to get elected and had tried to derail Gary Nelson's career.

Not that it went anywhere, because it was motivated by revenge.

Sigh. As is the nature of dirty laundry, just when you think you have it all washed, more is tossed in the hamper. But at least we can hang it on the line to air dry. Unless you live in Princeville, where laundry — clean or dirty — must remain hidden safely indoors.

Musings: Under Cover

How much would you pay to sleep in Pierce Brosnan's bed? Without him or James Bond in it, of course.

Such an experience is possible at 007's Haena vacation rental — one of two properties he owns on Kauai — and it costs $1,500 to $1,950 per night, with a $1,000 cleaning fee and $7,500 deposit.

It's questionable how Pierce actually got a TVR permit, since his property had no prior history of vacation rental, as required by county ordinance. But then, secret agents operate outside the law, right?

The planning department initially denied Pierce's request for a TVR permit after an inspection found a storage area had been improperly converted into a kitchen without permits. But the Brosnans hired former deputy county attorney Lorna Nishimitsu, who managed to secure approval from the Planning Commission, even though the application lacked the required documentation.

The three-bedroom, “sleeps 6+” house has all the usual amenities of an upscale vacation rental — teak beds, fine linens, “oversized shower heads,” bamboo floors, hand-woven silk rugs, satellite TV, European lighting fixtures — along with gated security on a five-acre oceanfront lot.

It also has a rather dubious “garage” and other facilities that speak to a multi-family rental, prompting a citizen complaint to the county planning department, which promised an inspection. Perhaps that explains why the property's ad can no longer be accessed on the Bali Hai website.

Here's a picture of the “garage:”

The ad outlines its features:

Inside the garage is a fully equipped home office with a writing desk, computer, phone, and fax machine / printer.

Attached to the garage, you will find a well-stocked butler's pantry with tablecloths and linens, fine Russian china (service for 36) and a variety of stemware, a full size dishwasher, ice maker and refrigerator, as well as temperature controlled wine cabinets.

Now if they can go after Councilman Tim Bynum for having a rice cooker in a room in his private home, certainly this commercial property should raise an eyebrow. Even if it does belong to James Bond.

And then there's the fully enclosed, 480-square-foot "dining pavilion," which curiously seats 12 — perhaps to accommodate the “+” in the “sleeps 6+” part of the ad:

And don't forget the 900-square-foot yurt to “practice yoga, or to have a massage.” Or maybe sleep another four-to-six guests...

Pierce is also one of those guys who helpfully illuminates coconut trees. You know, so the native bats and Newell's shearwaters don't fly into them:

In the evening, our stately landscape lighting embellishes the mature coconut palms and creates a majestic backdrop against the blanket of stars.

If guests get bored with all that luxury and beach, no worries. Pierce also offers access to his land on Wainiha Powerhouse Road, where he was engaged in a long legal battle with Cathy Ham-Young over whether he had the right to deprive her taro patches of water so he could maintain his landscape ponds. Now she's passed on, and those contentious ponds remain — for the viewing pleasure of the well-heeled:

Private picnics and swimming excursions to our nearby 8 acre Wainiha Valley river property (1 mile away) can be easily arranged with 24/48 hour notice.

I guess even movie stars want to squeeze every possible penny out of their investments, and the planning commission is ever so eager to oblige  Because while money talks on Kauai, celebrity and money and a well-connected attorney talk even louder.

Speaking of money, thanks so much for the donations that have made via the Pay Pal button in the right hand menu, and also sent through the mail to PO Box 525, Anahola, 96703. I'm very grateful for the support that has been shown for my work! Mahalo!