i L i n d . n e t

Yesterday in Kaaawa, the wind was the thing. To be honest, it was scary, and a lot of people we talked to agreed that they spent at least part of the night worried about their safety.

And then…not a peep anywhere in the news. Not yesterday when I check about 5 p.m., and not this morning. Zip.

Oh, another strange thing.

We left the house on our morning walk between 6:45 and 7 a.m. It was cold, but the wind had stopped almost two hours earlier. We did our normal loop starting at our house, down and around to the rear of the fire station, then up to the end of Huamalani Road, back down to the fire station, and then along Kamehameha Highway past Swanzy Beach Park and on to the other end of Kaaawa.

But when we got down to the fire station, we were suddenly enveloped in an unusually warm breath of wind. It was quite noticeable and we both commented on it, although it passed in a minute or so. And when we stopped to talk to friends on the other side of Swanzy park, they brought up the strange warm air. It was like a warm air pocket drifting along within the generally cold air.

I meant to comment last week’s Advertiser’s story about the high tech tax credit, “Rich claim 95% of tax credits for investing in Hawaii tech industry“.

The headline really set the tone. Here’s the story lead:

Hawai’i's wealthiest residents are among the biggest beneficiaries of the state’s tax credits for technology investors.

Individuals with incomes of $200,000 or more claimed $56.8 million in technology investment tax credits in 2006, according to recently released figures. That’s more than 95 percent of all technology investment tax credits claimed by individuals that year.

Reading the story, it’s as if the profile of rich investors is a surprising discover, an embarrassing disclosure.

It isn’t until well down in the story that the reader is told that, well, such investments are limited to the wealthy as a matter of law.

Those benefiting from the tax credits tend to be wealthy because securities laws restrict such private equity sales to high-net-worth individuals, said Jeff Au, managing director for Honolulu venture capital firm PacifiCap Management Inc. The idea is to prevent small, non-savvy investors from getting burned through private equity.

So the story is, well, a non-story. Or a story that could have been written at the time the law was originally passed, without waiting for the data on actual usage. The tax credits will be claimed by rich people because that’s a requirement of federal law.

Still on newspaper news, I ran into this blog entry concerning West Hawaii Today, “Lots of paper, little content.” Perhaps it’s overstated, but then again…

Tuesday’s issue was simply a confirmation of why I do not subscribe, 46 pages of newsprint with about six pages worth reading. I don’t mind paying for good content, but so often buying the WHT is less than satisfactory, with so little return for the cover price.

In the entire newspaper there were just four or five feature articles worth reading, and much of the local material had been previously well covered by online sources, including the local blogs. The Pflueger/Kaloko Dam issue and his not-guilty plea, the front page headline on local road projects were addressing local issues. These are also subjects where the paper is playing catchup with island blogs that have covered these issues in far more depth.

And in Chicago, a move to outsource copy editing and layout, possibly to India.

And, finally, another round of photos from my dad’s scrapbooks, this time of surfing in and around Long Beach, California, in the late 1930s.

This set includes several photos of my dad and his brother, Tom, surfing in Long Beach and San Onofre.

Later in the week, the First National Surfing Championships held in Long Beach in late 1938.

Of course, the construction of the breakwater to create the port of Long Beach destroyed these surf breaks, so this is all History with a capital H.

Just click on the photo for more.