You may have noticed the new look.
After struggling for months to find a solution to a problem displaying daily entries properly for those of you using certain PC versions of Internet Explorer, I decided to abandon the previous WordPress “theme” and select another that avoids the problem. For those affected viewers, the old version pushed the daily content down below the sidebars. This new version hopefully solves that issue. I’ve checked it out from Windows XP running on my MacBook, as well as another PC, and it looks okay. So far. There are a few missing links which I have to add or correct, but otherwise it appears to be a successful transition. If you are still having display issues, please let me know (ian[at]ilind.net).
It’s crunch time for the House Finance and Senate Ways and Means committees, with the first decking deadline, with just one more session day before the first decking deadline next Friday, when all bills that are going to remain alive must be filed in their final form. Both committees are grinding that lawmaking sausage at top speed.
A friend called my attention to HB 2956, which would allow the Board of Land and Natural Resources to change various hunting restrictions or conditions–”size limits, bag limits, hunting days, open and closed seasons, specifications of hunting gear which may be used or possessed, and special conditions for hunting”–without resorting to the rulemaking process. These are currently set by rule, and the adoption of new rules requires adherence the public process laid out in Chapter 91, the Hawaii Administrative Procedures Act.
I’m not all that sympathetic to hunting, but hunters are certainly entitled to the same protections from arbitrary government action as others enjoy.
What has my friend up set is that the bill was given a double referral, first to the House Committtee on Water, Land, Ocean Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs, and then on to Finance. WLH did not schedule it for a hearing, but it was kept alive when it was re-referred to Finance alone. This means that the subject matter committee, the one where members have more experience with the substantive issues involved, was bypassed. Only Finance, which is concerned with the fiscal impact of legislation, held a hearing and voted that the bill be passed with amendments.
Right now, the legislative web site does not indicate any testimony on the measure.
My friend comments:
The bill circumvented your scrutiny by avoiding the Judiciary committee, where it normally would be heard. It even avoided the Water Land committee and had only a Finance committee hearing today (Friday).
When an interested party asked what was happening, he was told that this bill was to get out of the House due to pressure by someone or some group.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the only bill moving “due to pressure by someone or some group”, and it has a long way to go before becoming law. But it indicates a problem perceived by the public when the legislative
process is stretched to accommodate unidentified interests.
There’s been lots of interesting material about the damage to the Superferry and current repairs appearing over the past several days on the Island Breath and Hawaii Superferry Unofficial Blog.
I don’t normally track sports issues, but attorney and sports commentator Jeff Portnoy made a very telling point about UH mens basketball in his Advertiser blog last weekend.
Jeff asks: “Where are the students?”
…its time to address the total lack of student support for this team. There are NO excuses. It was a Saturday night game on a 3 day weekend against the team leading the conference. And only 50 or so students showed up ( by the way, having less than 5000 total fans is a sad joke in itself, but that’s for another time).
Having just come back from a trip to North Carolina and games at UNC and Duke, I am again reminded about what college basketball at the Division l level is all about. Its about hundreds, if not thousands of students, cheering on their team. With painted faces, team shirts, and organized cheers, its what makes this game the best there is. And then there is Hawaii’s pathetic student involvement. Dont give me this garbage about ” its a commuter school” or ” all the students work” or any of the other excuses I consistently hear about why UH Basketball is basically played in front of non students who do their best try to act like a college crowd.
It’s a provocative question and drew some interesting comments.
I happened to be at the hearing for the Senate version of HB 2956, SB 2747 (http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/docs/getstatus2.asp?billno=SB2747). A number of hunters and others testified against it, explicitly complaining about a lack of due process & participation. Wisely, the Senate committee deferred this bill.
As an old sports editor, there are two things wrong with the UH relationship with the students. One was the “three-day weekend” – students will get outa town if at all possible. The other is that with no real tradition of success, there’s no real lure for the students. If it’s there, they might go but they might also go to the bars or to a movie or something else where their friends will be.
The school has to realize that it has to market the team to its students every bit as much as it does to the general public.