Hawaii is not alone in facing substantial (scary) budget cuts. A story in the Seattle Times over the weekend describes the impact of shortfalls on the state’s universities. It isn’t pretty.

For thousands of people clamoring at the doors of higher education — often to get retrained or better educated because of the downturn — there may simply not be enough seats.

Community-college officials say they might need to shed 6,000 students or more from the 145,000 who attend the state’s 34 community and technical colleges. That would mean some classes would be closed when filled, offered on limited schedules or shut down altogether, effectively ending the long-standing policy of allowing access to all eligible students.

Colleges across Washington have been warned that state budget cuts might reach 20 percent, or $600 million, over the next two years. The downturn seemed to hit so quickly that even the message from Olympia got garbled.

Just how 20% cuts foreseen at UH will play out remains to be seen.

Also from the Seattle Times–“Can blogging by lobbying?” Tough questions being raised about politics and blogging.

Earlier this year, the PDC was asked by some lobbyists whether calls to action made over the Internet fell under any lobbying regulations, and the agency began probing the topic.

“One of the issues was the grass roots involvement, in terms of prompting individuals, in a call to action, to contact legislators, to send in letters,” said Doug Ellis, the PDC’s assistant director.

Business interests asked, “Can we do the same kind of thing? Is it proper? Do we have to report it?” Ellis said.

From Baron Sekiya on the Big Island there’s bad news and good news. Bad news–he was laid off by West Hawaii Today. Good news–he’s got a new site up and running. Here’s his message:

I started a news website, Hawaii247.com

I was laid-off from West Hawaii Today on Nov 7th, I started shooting photos the next day for my own site as I wondered if I could make a dream a reality. Late Friday night I flipped the magic switch to turn it on as friends working on it with me and their friends wanted to see it live. There are still bugs to work out, but news isn’t wine, it doesn’t get better with age.

So check it out, comments are always welcome, I still have lots of ideas which haven’t been shown yet on the site. Hopefully I can bring the community back into a community news site without wasting any paper.

I hope Hawaii247.com can help usher in a renaissance of journalism as my friend Mark Hancock calls it.

Meanwhile, Jim Manke notes this UH connection:

AP story in the Advertiser Sunday morning speculating about Michelle Obama as first lady includes several quotes from Paul Costello – an aide to Roslyn Carter in a previous life – while in that capacity, Costello and Evan Dobelle, Carter’s Chief of Protocol, got to know each other, and Costello was one of three or four people Dobelle brought to UH with him to run the UH PR shop (I think Costello is still at Stanford med school? where he went from here).

And a quick check on another former UH figure finds June Jones’ SMU football team with a 1-10 record this season. Yup. One win. Ten losses so far.

Jones shifted the spotlight somewhat by suspending three star players for the last two games of the season.

But the move is getting fan support with comments like this in one sports blog:

Thank you coach for teaching these young men lessons about life, not just football. No matter what your W-L record is you are a winner in my book.

SMU needs players with GREAT character NOT just GREAT football players

Here’s another batch of archival photos to start the week. These were taken by my mother, Helen Lind, during trips to the Puna side of the Big Island in 1956 and 1960, and show the results of recent eruptions. The 1960 visit, which I recall, followed the big Kapoho eruption. Anyway, click on the photo to browse through this latest batch.