I knew that it would happen at some point, but that’s different from the reality of suddenly being plunged into the task of finding immediate assistance and perhaps a new living situation for my parents, who are struggling with new medical problems. As someone who has not been through this before, just figuring out the available options and then finding a reputable outfit to deliver is a real challenge. Friends have been helpful, and a broadside email to my University High School class brought a number of good suggestions.

Your suggestions are definitely welcome. Email ian(at)ilind.net.

Andy Parx on Kauai responded to my Honolulu Weekly column on campaign funding by again questioning why the recent Supreme Court decision could be expected to impact on Hawaii’s scheme for public funding of candidates.

I still don’t see it Ian and neither Bopp nor you make it clear why you conflate raising the amount allowed to be contributed by private sources (which is what was ruled unconstitutional) and the public finding provided to a candidate who receives no private contributions.

The two are very different especially when you look at what the trigger for unconstitutionality was: giving an unfair advantage- i.e. one not given across the board. Nothing in the public financing system restricts the privately financed candidate or advantages the publicly financed. candidate. The privately funded one can opt for public funding in an equal manner and the public financing increases no matter where they privately funded person got their money.

Here’s my reply to Andy:

The logic spelled out in the decision includes something like this, as I read it and understand it.

By ramping up fund available to a publicly funded candidate, you are in essence penalizing the privately funded candidate, and any possible independent groups, for fully exercising their right to spread their message in the election. The more they exercise their right to spend money or speak, the more they boost the publicly funded opponent.

It’s that perhaps indirect impediment to free speech that the court has targeted in this decision.

It’s not the normal approach that we’re used to, and that’s why it seems to me the decision is so disruptive.

Here’s one part of the decision which cites favorably a Minnesota case (Day v. Holahan), a case which struck down the kind of sliding scale for public funding based on the expenditures of the privately funded opponent or independent political groups:

While BCRA does not impose a cap on a candidate’s expenditure of personal funds, it imposes an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises that First Amendment right. Section 319(a) requires a candidate to choose between the First Amend-ment right to engage in unfettered political speech and subjection to discriminatory fundraising limitations. Many candidates who can afford to make large personal expenditures to support their campaigns may choose to do so despite §319(a), but they must shoulder a special and potentially significant burden if they make that choice. See Day v. Holahan, 34 F. 3d 1356, 1359–1360 (CA8 1994) (concluding that a Minnesota law that increased a candidate’s expenditure limits and eligibility for public funds based on independent expenditures against her candidacy burdened the speech of those making the independent expenditures)…

I’m not a lawyer, that that seems to be a pretty clear statement of the Supreme Court’s view and it’s not favorable towards the kind of public finance scheme we’ve decided to experiment with.

With Honolulu Advertiser employees cope with labor issues, folks in the Star-Bulletin newsroom have been reading a Seattle Weekly profile of David Black, owner of the S-B and MidWeek, as well as a chain of newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. The story describes Black’s Sound Publishing subsidiary as “the newspaper entity in Washington with the highest aggregate circulation”.

Across the chain, about one-third of Black’s newspapers are unionized, with the majority of those employees in Hawaii and Vancouver. On the whole, his papers are thinly staffed. At his non-daily properties, you’ll generally find an editor, a reporter or two, and maybe a photographer. Hence, after conducting an interview, young writers a couple of years out of college are likely to set their notepads aside and un-sling a camera to snap a few shots of their subjects.

A reporter working for Sound Publishing in Washington makes around $27,000, an average annual salary generally higher than those offered by competing community papers and even some small dailies (compared to job openings posted by the WNPA or at journalismjobs.com, among other sources). Generally, two different types of journalists are attracted to Black-owned papers. There are doe-eyed cub reporters, fresh out of journalism school, wanting to get experience and build a portfolio of clips. They stick around for a couple of years, grouse about covering homecoming games and community parades, and typically move on to bigger newspapers.

The other breed is gray-haired veterans, content to put themselves out to pasture. They’re tired of the deadlines at dailies, tired of following breaking news from Portland to Idaho to Los Angeles, sleeping in cheap motels, and not coming home to their spouses and children until late at night.

Hey, these Bushies must be assigned to read and reread 1984. It shows in their exercise of language. This week’s example:

“Timeline”. One word. Attributed to a defeatist Democratic concept. Definitely bad.

“Time horizon”. Two words. Very different. Definitely neither a timeline nor defeatist. And obviously good.

Amazing.

And for your weekend reading, check out the new version of The Memory Hole, a great source for unusual government documents and reports.