Here Come The Train, Mufi, Barack
Wednesday - October 29, 2008
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Del.icio.usWe’ll have rail transit on Oahu and Barack Obama in the White House. That’s how I read the tea leaves for next Tuesday.
We’ll be shed of the Bushman who misled this country into war, squandered a budget surplus to give tax cuts to fat cats, politicized the Justice Department and set up warrantless eavesdropping and the Guantanamo gulag.
This is Obama’s time, just as it was John F. Kennedy’s in 1961 when others thought it should be Lyndon Johnson’s or Richard Nixon’s.
John McCain goes back to the Senate.
Sarah Palin will be remembered as the ditziest candidate to ever run for vice president.
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Linda Lingle called Palin “brilliant.” Lingle’s our existential attitude governor - disorientation and confusion in the face of a meaningless and absurd world of GOP politics.
Lingle cast doubt on Obama’s Hawaiiness, saying she’s never met him. Well, yeah, she was still a Mainland girl when he was born here, went to Noelani School and Punahou.
I saw a McCain-Palin sign in former GOP congresswoman Pat Saiki’s yard and knowing her liberal, pro-choice stance, I imagined her saying “I have to do it for the party, but I sure ain’t wishing for either in the White House.”
It is rail transit’s time. The majority sees a future when we must move more people than can be moved on buses and roads as Ann Kobayashi’s less-than-half-baked plan proposes. Rail is expensive, but 50 years from now we’ll say “thank goodness we did it!”
Mufi wins by a huge margin.
He’s got many negatives: delayed curbside recycling until forced to do it; whole life at the public trough; really unconscionable campaign stuff when he opposed Abercrombie and Bainum. But it’s a younger and more visionary mayor’s time.
Donovan Dela Cruz will be very marginalized the next two years in City Council for having backed Kobayashi. Don’t expect much in Whitmore Village, Mokuleia, Waialua, Haleiwa, Waimea, Pupukea and Sunset Beach.
I’m voting for new blood at the Board of Education - Janis Akuna and Carol Mon Lee. I’d vote for a new schools superintendent if I could. Thank you, Pat Hamamoto, but we need new leadership.
I’m voting “no” on Con-Con. Use the Legislature to change laws. It’s much cheaper. Also not so emotion-of-the-moment oriented. Our Constitution is fine, except for not allowing same-sex marriage. That will come by amendment in time.
Even if all of the above goes my way it won’t mean a darn thing to me unless three other things happen.
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1) Single-payer, national health insurance that covers every person.
2) Exiting coal and oil; investing heavily in solar, wind, wave energy and nuclear plants.
3) Adopting advanced health services for every veteran from Iraq and Afghanistan; full college scholarships for those who’ve served two tours in a combat zone.
And bury that trickle-down economics theory that tax cuts for the rich create jobs. The rich figure ways to profit while downsizing the work force.
Yes, the rich pay a bigger percentage of tax. As they get richer they should be required to pay more and forever on Social Security tax. Redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation is America’s wonderful legacy.
Those are the biggies on my mind.
Plastic grocery bags and what kind of light bulbs we should use are way, way down on my list of priorities.
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