In case you missed them, Steve Laudig has contributed two insightful comments in the past few days that are worth calling attention to.

Here’s part of the first comment, posted on Friday:

The holes in two inadequate social service safety nets lined up yesterday to kill an infant that fell through those holes to its death.

The lack of adequate, competent, affordable, readily available mental health services for the sad, damaged Mr. Higa left him to be “available” to do “baby sitting” service.

The lack of adequate, affordable, competent, available day care services for the economically stressed parents of the child made Mr. Higa’s “availability” useful, indeed, necessary to them.

There are probably scores, dozens, perhaps hundreds of other parents facing exactly the same day care need the day before yesterday, yesterday, today and tomorrow who are doing exactly the same thing. Responding to the unnecessary risks generated by inadequate social services by taking risk [presumably unknowingly].

And Steve was back yesterday with this:

I’ve been thinking a little more on the saddest thing that has happened this year. I happen to have a connection to a person living in the building from whence this tragedy issued.

I’m told that there are several children living in the building. Being children they are hyper alert to the emotional climate in their surroundings.

I’m trying to imagine myself as a, say 6 year old, living in the building. A tragedy involving me has happened. I know the baby. I know the mother. I know the “bad” guy. I don’t understand what’s going on except something really bad has happened.

A proactive social services regime would be in the building knocking on the doors finding the parents, or care-givers, and the kids to provide trauma counseling.

Adults can, supposedly, handle tragedy and trauma. It’s the kids that don’t have the skills yet. I’d like any thoughts on this issue. If this were an office shooting, or a school shooting, I’m thinking there’d be “proactivity”. Perhaps there has been here, but I’ve seen or heard no evidence of it.

The Department of Health got part way there with a press release on Friday advising people to call its help line for help in dealing with the incident. But, as steve notes, that’s a different thing that knocking on doors in the building or its neighbors.

Another friend sent this query yesterday via email:

I looked on the blog today for some mention, discussion of Mark Platte’s column on Sunday about Legislative coverage. As someone who has worked both sides of the street, you should have something to say about this, I thought. I wonder if legislators breathe a sigh of relief to know that the media wants to ignore the process of making the sausage, just concentrate on if we need sausage and whether a flavor meets the need.

And doesn’t this fly in the face of the Magaoay story, which was all about the process, not whether the right decisions were made or even showing, for sure, that Magaoay’s fund raisers were using the process to raise money. No suggestion that he had directed grants based on contributions or even hinted at favorable treatment for the donors’ favorite causes. Or did I miss something?

“Not same old capitol coverage,” Platte writes. Well, no. Lots less coverage. Instead of a January surge to blanket the legislative action, only a few reporters now make their home at the capitol for the next several months.

Platte writes:

Nobody likes reading about the incessant power struggle between Republicans and Democrats or party infighting. And we’re not crazy about political spin and press conferences.

But you might phrase that differently: “Nobody likes reading the way we’ve written about the incessant power struggles…”

The fact is that people do enjoy reading the real inside story. There is a hunger to know how things work. But the typical “he said, she said” back and forth that passes for legislative coverage doesn’t deliver. I have no problem with turning away from that kind of coverage. But simply deciding to overlook the internal day-to-day dynamics, as well as the cross currents that make up politics, looks to me like a mistaken overreaction.

A couple of paragraphs later, Platte notes that one result is the Advertiser’s own editors were blindsided by a quick shift in political winds while staring at the “big picture”.

We had in-depth profiles of those issues last week: getting healthcare to rural areas, the spread of invasive species, the use of alternative energy to protect the environment and the push for early-childhood education. The latter installment had to be changed when news broke that the education initiative might be pre-empted or delayed by the need to find money for UH repairs and maintenance.

Here’s how I look at it. Political decisions–and if you’re talking about the Legislature, then you are talking about politics–are not made solely on some rational calculus about issues and needs. If we had that kind of mathematics available and a consensus on how to deploy it, then we could turn all the decision-making over to a few technocrats on a small room. It just doesn’t work that way. There are competing and often equally compelling needs, viewed by decision-makings at various levels with different values (as in those filters through which they evaluate issues) and experiences. All that rational issue assessment that the Advertiser says its going to focus on gets you only part way, but it just isn’t what accounts for some issues or bills moving ahead while others flounder. If you’ve ever been inside the legislature, then you know how much can depend on personal conflicts, conflicting political ambitions, and all the colorful stuff that makes the nitty gritty interesting.

What’s the point? One goal of legislative coverage has to be to give people a sense of how and why some issues succeed. Where’s the coverage of behind the scenes work by key players, whether legislators, interest groups, or lobbyists, much of it taking place last year or during the interim between sessions? Why aren’t reporters walking the halls with some of those key lobbyists or letting us know what messages, facts, or perspectives they bring to the process every day? How about better coverage of just how House and Senate leaders manipulate the levers of power, and I don’t necessarily mean “manipulate” in a negative way. How about showing in some specific ways how this year’s election impacts on key players and their plans for the session? Maybe compare, in depth, a compellling issue that just hasn’t gotten a lot of traction, like publicly funded elections, with another issue that drew majority support. Lots of different ways to approach the system and explain how it works in ways that at least suggests to people how they might enter into the political process.

Issues and big picture are nice, but they fail to empower the public because they give no guide through the sausage factory.

Look at UH football. Yes, game coverage is important. But now we know, in hindsight, that some play-by-play coverage of budget decisions within the athletic department and the larger campus might have shed important light on the limits and constraints facing coaches and players. Then at least we would know where fingers should properly be pointing now.

So it goes on Monday morning.

I did manage to wrap up my 2007 photos with a collection of Kaaawa pictures taken during the month of December.

Just click for the full December gallery.