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Today's Top News
The Privatization of Hawai'i: Some Things Should Be Free
Americans have always been interested in making a buck. But today, even in essential public services, administrators look at everything as either a profit center or burdensome overhead - and overhead is bad.
Not much is truly "free," but there are services that should appear to be free to the end user.
When I first moved to Kaua'i, I was shocked to discover that children (obliged by law to attend school) had to pay money to ride the school bus. That was unheard of along the Eastern Seaboard where I went to school.
I grew up thinking that there are some things that would always be "free." The list certainly included fire and police protection, public libraries, schools and parks.
But that is not the way it is anymore. In many communities, public schools and prisons are operated as for-profit businesses. Even fire and police protection services are becoming privatized in some places.
Bush Business Model
There is a coherent business model that the Bush administration has used to run the federal government for the last seven years. It has two main components that tend to funnel money to its corporate cronies: deregulate and plunder.
This strategy has worked brilliantly. Since 2001 it took only a few years to turn a projected $1 trillion federal surplus into the great sucking black hole of our current debt.
The Bush philosophy has turned public resources and facilities into mining operations, clear-cut forests and private monopoly operations (National Mining Association, Wackenhut Corporation).
Bush has waged the war in Iraq using mercenary armies managed by private corporations for access to foreign natural resources (Blackwater, Halliburten).
The Bush administration has sold off public airwaves to telecommunication companies for chump change. They have allowed the consolidation of corporate control over newspapers, radio, television, telephone and the Internet. (Verizon, News Corp).
Without regulations, Bush has permitted the utilities and lending industries to "stick it" to the public while betting against their futures (Enron, CitiBank).
The Bush business model has been an unsavory mix of military, private and public resources coordinated by multinational corporations and subsidized by the public.
We are now willing to spend billions on SWAT team gear for every small town in America while our parks, roads and bridges fall into ruins. We are willing to subsidize billions for impractical ethanol production at the cost of food production. Looking back, 9/11 appears less the reason for this madness than an excuse for it.
Lingle's Corporate Style
There has been a trickle down of the Bush way of doing business right here in Hawai'i. Under the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle, we have seen a microcosm of Bush business techniques applied through agencies such as the Department of Land and Natural Resources, Hawaii Agribusiness Development Corp., the Department of Transportation and the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism. With pressure on the legislature and courts, the Lingle administration has been able to circumvent laws restricting many of its schemes.
Perhaps the most controversial and widely known example is the collusion of the Lingle administration (through the transportation department) with the Hawaii Superferry Corp. and U.S. military interests to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds to get the companies operating in the state.
The money included Maritime Administration loan guarantees, state funded harbor and barge-ramp improvements, as well as a new, six-year harbor improvement plan totaling $842 million. Of that, $345 million would go to Kahului Harbor, at least in part to make room for the Superferry and foreign tour ship operations.
It seems to me that whether the Superferry ever makes a dime is not too important as long as the public funds get spent to jump-start a multi-billion-dollar ship-building project for the military.
Austal USA, builder of the "Alakai," now has a contract to go ahead with a design proposal for a Joint High Speed Vessel based to some degree on the Superferry design. This was announced the day the Superferry was taken out of service because of a leaky hull due to "rudder problems."
In addition to the privatization of public resources, public infrastructure has been eroding without replacement or repair. The state and county have tax surpluses, so what is going on? Do they calculate a tax surplus as a corporate profit? Is it that the less they do, the better they are doing?
An Arranged Marriage
The DLNR "manages" the entire 6,000-plus acres of state land comprising the Mana Plain. The two major activities on the Mana Plain are the research, development, testing and oversight of military systems, and the experimental growing of genetically modified organisms and the production of patented seeds.
Incidentally, there is also a third entity, Polihale State Park, which is inconveniently located at the far end of the Mana Plain.
A marriage was proposed between the two big players.
The groom, the Pacific Missile Range Facility, oversees the military experiments. PMRF is a Navy base that acts as a military industrial park for Raytheon, Verizon, Textron Systems and other defense contractors. Surprisingly, the Navy does not provide base security. That core function is contracted out to ITT Services Corp. Much goes on there, and much more is coming.
The bride, Agribusiness Development Corp., oversees the agricultural experiments. The ADC is a quasi-private state corporation whose mission is to "provide leadership and advocacy for the conversion of agribusiness into a dynamic growth industry." The ADC has facilitated the use of vast tracks of Mana by Syngenta, Dupont, Monsanto and other chemical giants to do genetic experiments.
The name the Navy coined for this proposal was the Agricultural Protection Initiative. There was a public outcry when the details of the agreement were revealed.
Three is a crowd, and many predicted the state park would be the odd man out in this relationship. It was suspected that access to Polihale State Park would be compromised by this marriage of convenience.
The marriage of PMRF and ADC was conducted by the DLNR in 2004, when a 25-year "non-exclusive easement" was arranged for the Navy. This deal allows PMRF to set the rules of conduct on the Mana Plain until 2029 and requires ag companies to communicate operations to PMRF.
Polihale Park Closed!
Few remember, but the Navy promised to maintain access to Polihale State Park during public negotiations with the DLNR. This promise was made by Capt. R. J. Connely, who commanded the base in 2004.
At the time, Rear Adm. Michael Vitale, commander of the Navy Region Hawai'i, said, "The state will continue to own the land and control all access. The Navy does not intend to impose any restrictions that would impede access to Polihale State Park. In fact, the Navy recently graded the dirt road leading to Polihale, improving access for the public."
What has followed has not been a reasonable maintenance of the access road.
Hundreds of millions of dollars flow to the corporations doing big business on the Mana Plain, yet the state park is closed. The pavilions are wrecked. There is no water to drink or toilets to flush. The road to the park is in such a state that the DLNR felt compelled to close the road in December last year.
For DLNR, the park is simply a drain on resources.
Fixing the DLNR Conflict
PMRF's Agricultural Protection Initiative has been bad for Kaua'i. Convenience of access to our state parks and beaches should not be traded for military operations or agricultural experiments.
DLNR is not a private development corporation, but a public institution. Its primary role is the preservation of Hawai'i's publicly owned natural resources. Today, DLNR is not fulfilling its mission.
Former state Rep. Brian Schatz recently wrote, "Under our state's Constitution, DLNR is supposed to preserve land but also open it up for development, conserve fish while it enables access for fishing, preserve water as it governs is distribution. These conflicting mandates almost guarantee that when the department succeeds it one arena, it will fail in the other.
"The Legislature can begin to fix this, but a constitutional amendment would be necessary to sort out this self-inflicted mess. Some DLNR divisions probably belong in other departments. Moving them will allow the agency to focus on its main job: the preservation of Hawai'i's natural resources."
Under the recent chairmanship of Peter Young, and now of Laura Thielen, the DLNR has been run as a for-profit business operation with the goal of adding money to the general fund of the Lingle administration.
That policy should end. Some things should be free.
Juan Wilson is a resident of Hanapepe and writes a bi-weekly column for The Garden Island. Juan is an architect-planner and the editor of www.IslandBreath.org
The Garden Island - Copyright © 2007
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23 Comments so far
Show AllOdd, This country obstensibly belongs to the people but none of the money ever comes back to any of us. On the contrary, sometimes the government pays MORE in services that it gets from the corporation in payment for the raw materials. Tongass National Forest is being logged off at a LOSS, the roads the Forest Services provides to the loggers costs more than the scale value of the timber. We are IMPORTING deforestation and exporting the legacy that a moral nation would pass on to those that follow us.
Veteran '66-68
I don't even understand why Hawaiians are no seeking independence as Kosovo did. They can obviously do better on their own with their nature and tourism. Except that US may bomb them!
if i was president, i would declare the hawaiian island people as enemy combatants and nuke the whole place.
what's it good for?
So damn heartbreaking - Polihale Beach is my favorite in the entire world.
Er, was...
Welcome to the world of Republcans. They do not believe in the common good, only in greed and profit. While the rest of the industrialized world laughs at us (they have long vacations, family leave, national health care)we are working our butts off for corporate profits that do not hardly benefit us. We are not any happier than the rest of the industrialized world and we are just going to die anyway just like them. (only sooner since we work so hard). What a bunch of duped fools we are!!!!!!!!
Some factual corrections to the first section:
Fire protection was private in the early days; you paid a particular fire company a fee and if you had a fire, they showed up. Because fire spreads, eventually it was decided that it made more sense for one (public) fire department to protect everyone.
High school students here in Rhode Island don't ride yellow school buses. They ride "public" RIPTA buses, which they have to pay for. I think my father rode the subway to high school in New York City in the 1930s.
Public (free) elementary schools didn't come in many places until well into the nineteenth century, and high schools even later.
I agree with the push-back against privatization. But let's not get overly romantic about the past supposed golden age. It's always been a struggle to get the same access and resources for poor folks (paid for with tax dollars) as for the rich folks who can pay the fees.
http://www.focusthenation.org/contactus.php
Sustainability network Focus the Nation
The annexation of Hawaii was illegal. Hawaii has a case for independance. I don't see the benefit for Hawaii of being part of the US.
Betsy is correct. The egalitarian-leaning face of the US only surfaced with President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s after the privatization model that characterized the US since 1776 crashed in 1929 and nearly took the nation down with it.
It wasn't until the 1980s that the charming cowboy Ronny Raygun pulled off a successful PR campaign to convince the US electorate that a return to the dark ages was in their best interest. Cheney with his puppet W succeeeded in making the kill.
Hawaii's economy has never been very diverse, making it more vulnerable to privatization than some other states.
Money is not raked into a pile and burned. It flows somewhere. And it is flowing uphill in the Bush/Cheney Golden Era of Corporate Looting/Welfare, biggest crime haul in the history of the world.
Without the Bush tax cuts/welfare for the rich, the stock market would have gone down. So "government intervention" saved the capitalists' butts. Without Greenspan's neo-con banker-controlled Fed bailout/welfare for banks, home prices would have declined instead of boomed, which took the sting out of the last corporate scam, the dot-com stock bubble, and so saved the Republicans in 2002, which was Greenspan's purpose. So "government agency intervention" created the bankers' boomtimes of the last five years. Until the American people could take on no more debt service at all.
The Bush tax cuts created Ten Trillion dollars of new debt, and guess what, it's owed to the rich... by us. Same with now-bankrupt Republican California. Instead of taxing the wealthy, the government 'sells' them bonds, to be paid back to them WITH tax-free interest, by the small taxpayers! How stupid is this?
So Bush is screwing us on both ends. He borrows from the rich, and pays them back plus interest with tax money. And then squanders the borrowed money on private corporations owned by the rich, who grab at the chance to rape the bankrupt treasury of the American people with overcharging by hundreds of percent. Thus ensues even more corporate welfare.
Then Bush gives "his base" tax cut after tax cut, ensuring the process goes on, and the wealthy become even more wealthy and even more the owners of America. In the Bush/Cheney plan, the "people" are just garbage, to be humored and distracted, until the crooked vote is in, to keep up the illusion of a democracy. Then they become the slaves of the new American debt plantation.
Privatization should be known by a more appropriate moniker: privateering. And, like in the above Hawaiian incident, in the new world created by the Republicans, privateers and pirates rule the day, with great harm to the public good they care so little about. Remember, capitalism in a nutshell is: buy low and screw that guy, and sell high and screw that guy too. Don't buld public society on the credo of pirates, and don't elect any more Republican buccaneers.
Do your civic duty to help enable free education, free healthcare, free transport, free water and free information for all. You can volunteer to help maintain it. It's about the most productive action you can take - the most output for the least inputs. Public enterprise has proven itself the standard of market value that private enterprise cannot even come close to matching. Note that living standard in social democracies is twice that in the US per hour worked and four times that in the US per BTU of energy consumed. It's enough to make a capitalist's knees quiver. Don't forget - free food is available from the trees, bushes, and vines. There's an abundance for everyone - except the capitalists - they have to be caged and fed rations. Their system is crashing - forever this time.
I think it's ironic that someone who calls himself NRA Freedom should be so adamant that nothing is free. Of course there are things that are free, if we want them to be. For example, I went canoeing twice last year on a local river and it didn't cost me a dime. A few days ago I opened a door for an elderly woman and I didn't charge her anything. When I was young I hitchhiked across the country and none of the people who gave me rides asked me for a penny. So there are things out there that are free. People can do things for each other and they don't have to get paid for it if they don't want to.
But that's not the point of this article. Instead, the point of this article is that there are some things that we shouldn't be charged for twice. We shouldn't pay school taxes and still have to pay so our kids can ride the bus. We shouldn't have to pay our water bill and still have to buy bottled water because the water that comes out of our taps isn't fit to drink. We shouldn't have to pay taxes and still have to pay extra to the private sector to save the citizens of New Orleans from drowning. We shouldn't see half of each of our taxpayer dollars go toward the military, while Blackwater mercenaries get paid as much in two days as our soldiers get paid in a month. And etc.
And we shouldn't have "survival of the fittest" capitalism for the poor and socialism for the extremely wealthy. And poor people shouldn't die in wars so rich oil barons can watch their profits soar. But we do. And they do. And that's a damn shame. And it doesn't make us free. Instead, it makes us slaves.
"The Bush tax cuts created Ten Trillion dollars of new debt,"
Not really. The "tax cuts" were actually cuts in tax *rates*, and as such were a *policy* that in and of itself didn't cost anything in the sense of things like roads, bombs, or salaries for federal workers. In this light, I wonder then where you got your "Ten Trillion dollars of new debt" claim. Any new debt would come from specific items that had to be paid for, like the three examples I gave, and not through the implimentation of a tax policy.
The fact is that for the last few years, with only the last several months as an exception, actual reciepts form income taxes have *increased*.
"Ten Trillion dollars of new debt"
This is demonstrably false. The *total* debt is a bit less than ten trillion, 9.2 trillion actually, and is an aggregate figure that includes debt accrued from past administrations as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt
jakenewton said: "Any new debt would come from specific items that had to be paid for" Oh, really?
So, if you continue spending the way you always have, but lose your job, that's not really 'debt'?
Nice to know...
My brother lives in Kona, Hawaii.
On friday night, Wall-Street bankers are flown in on their private jets to spend the weekend there. They leave Sunday night. So many private jets, the airport is filled with them every weekend.
Just to let you know where your brokerage fees are going, and the Bush tax cuts.
I'm sure they deserve the break from their hectic schedule.
"So, if you continue spending the way you always have, but lose your job, that's not really 'debt'?"
Whose talking about losing a job? We were talking about the tax rate cut, and the National debt. After the tax rate cut, receipts of taxes increased. FVHorn was factually incorrect about the increase of the size of the debt under Bush.
They have a captive audience as the saying goes. You see the same things here on the mainland in the poor neighborhoods.
Maybe one day the majority will understand that:
They think that the Corporate Business Model is the best (we're ALL guilty of that)
....doesn't work with
Profit should not be a part of Public systems.
reminds me of paying people in India to handle welfare accounts in the US....
jakenewton said: "We were talking about the tax rate cut, and the National debt."
Cutting taxes without also cutting spending is placing a bet on private enterprise with PUBLIC funds. The gov't is cutting its income (i.e. LOSING its job) without cutting its spending. If this is for an investment that pays off, so far so good. But WHEN HAS IT EVER PAID OFF? When has the resultant increase in GDP paid off in increased tax revenues sufficient to pay off the resultant debt?
Meethinks you're confused. 30 years of supply-side economics leads to a pretty undeniable conclusion, one any third-grader could have told you 30 years ago: cutting your income and NOT cutting your spending leads to red ink, and that is bad. ONLY a pocketbook the size of the US economy can go 30 years before it learns that lesson. But...
THAT lesson is going to be a doozy!! If you're under 30, it's all coming down on YOUR head.
"The gov't is cutting its income (i.e. LOSING its job) without cutting its spending. If this is for an investment that pays off, so far so good. But WHEN HAS IT EVER PAID OFF? When has the resultant increase in GDP paid off in increased tax revenues sufficient to pay off the resultant debt?"
Maybe you haven't noticed that the deficit has been *reducing* in both nominal real terms over the last few years, as has the debt as a percentage of GDP?
ID_ten_T ERROR in aisle 10
I forgot ubrew12, that you shouldn't assume that the cut in tax rate equates to a cut in income in the first place. As for debt, there is nothing wrong eith that in and of itself, it all depends on what you go into debt for. Families in the US regularly go into debt at the rate of several times their household income when the get a house.