There were at least two phases of color as the sunrise approached this morning. The first was early, as the first hints of morning painted those clouds a wonderful color. We were just leaving the house at about 6:15 a.m. as that first round of color was beginning to fade. But the colors rebounded by the time we got down to the beach, perhaps 5-8 minutes before the sun finally appeared.

Governor Lingle has a very busy week here in Hawaii. She is way too busy to join the majority of the nation’s governors at a meeting with President-Elect Obama. At least that’s how she describes her schedule.

But take a closer look at Lingle’s plans for the week. There are what appear to be relatively routine internal staff meetings, two conservative radio talk shows, several glad-hand meetings with other officials, a few community appearances.

And there was yesterday’s press conference concerning the “Better Place” electric car plan. At least the gov was sensitive enough to be defensive about her decision not to attend the Obama session. After all, she blew a hole several weeks wide through her schedule prior to the electon in order to campaign for you-know-who and to bad mouth Obama.

I’m still not real clear on what Lingle actually announced. There was a “memorandum of understanding” between the battery company and Hawaiian Electric, sort of a conceptual agreement to try to reach real agreements on specific issues later. There was not, as far as I can see there, any commitment of state funds although I’m sure there will be a request for special purpose revenue bonds in the upcoming legislative session.

And was it really news? The Advertiser’s Christie Wilson had the story two months ago. And Lingle announced the negotiations back in May, according to another summary.

In any case, Better Place founder Shai Agassi has an ambitious vision but is still a very long way from the ability to carry out its plans.

And did the press conference really justify Lingle’s decision to miss the Obama session focusing on the economic crisis? I count myself in the group of cynics.

Meanwhile, today is a big day for Gannett, where the latest wave of layoffs are expected to be announced in its chain of local newspapers.

And Rick Daysog reports today that the Carlyle Group might just dump Hawaiian Telcom and let bondholders and other investors take the resulting losses in a short sale to a new investment group. Daysog is doing a good job staying on top of this story as it unfolds.

One question still to be answered is the fate of Hawaiian Telcom’s defined benefit pension plan, one of those legacy plans in which employees are promised a certain income based on years of service and salary history when they retire. As I recall, the old Hawaiian Telephone plan was actually overfunded when Carlyle bought the company from Verizon, but I don’t know whether they were able to raid those funds as part of the deal.

I noticed yesterday that the bankruptcy filing by Hawaiian Telcom was just one of a series of filings by the clump of related companies.

The Washington Post business blog also noted the bankrupcy:

Carlyle had put $425 million in Hawaiian Telcom Communications and borrowed almost $1.2 billion to buy the company from Verizon in 2005. But the telecommunications company struggled almost from the start.

Its collapse followed other reversals for Carlyle this year. In March, Carlyle wrote off a $700 million investment in Carlyle Capital, an offshore public company that invested in mortgage-related securities. Then Carlyle announced in July that it would liquidate Carlyle-Blue Wave Partners Management, which made similar bets in mortgages.

By the way, if you think your internet connection is a bit slow, join the crowed, you’re just enjoying part of the Hawaii experience.

Here’s a thought-provoking assessment of island real estate by my friend Chuck Smith (www.oftwominds.com) after learning of the recent sale of a Manoa house where his family once lived.

There may be a few more spectacular real estate markets than Honolulu, Hawaii, but not many. With a median single-family home price around $615,000 (Honolulu home prices 3rd highest in nation), Honolulu trails only Silicon Valley and San Francisco in nosebleed-valuation territory.

But have Honolulu homeowners really reaped fantastic returns during the 2002-2007 real estate bubble? We have to look beneath the surface statistics to find out. While this exercise is specific to Honolulu, I believe it may be equally valid in many other markets in the U.S.

Here is my conclusion: the real (inflation-adjusted) gains in Honolulu were reaped in the 1970-1981 period; all buyers since 1981 have essentially made nothing. Yes, the nominal value of their house has risen, but when we factor in inflation, we find no real gains from the top of the last real estate bubble in 1980-81.

In an email to me, he added:

“Real estate is your best investment,” etc. –uh, not even close. Yes, if you bought in 1969 and sold in 1979, but virtually all gains since then have been inflation plus very modest annual increases of less than 1%

All this suggests to me that anyone who bought real estate on Oahu in 2004 – 2007 is very likely underwater or poised to slip underwater, and it is increasingly likely that even those who bought in 2002-2003 might well find their property worth considerably less than what they paid for it.

This also suggests the county will be gathering less property tax revenues as homeowners start demanding reductions in their appraisals back down to reality from bubble-era valuations. From $810K to $550K is quite a drop.

Of course you’re not gonna get an analysis like this from the real estate industry. Everyone with a stake in the bubble-era valuations is hoping nobody looks too closely at what property is actually worth today, and what it might be worth next year, or in 2012.

Read the rest of Chuck’s argument in his “Of Two Minds” blog.

Speaking of what you aren’t going to read in the mainstream media, I was struck by how much of yesterfday’s coverage of the Hawaiian Telcom bankruptcy filing read like it came straight from the company press release. Bankruptcy? Just routine.

A notable exception was Nanea Kalani’s story from the Pacific Business News daily update, which added some important perspective.

Hawaiian Telcom is one of only a handful of legacy telephone companies to declare bankruptcy and it may be the only company providing statewide land-line service to do so.

While scores of telecommuncations companies have tumbled into bankruptcy or closed since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, most were exclusively wireless specialists, long-distance providers or Internet service providers.

Good job.

The Office of Information Practices has only issued two opinions this year on the broad range of issues that fill its plate, from public records to Hawaii’s Sunshine Law. The lowest annual opinion count in OIP’s history was in 2000, when there were only three for the year. OIP will have to double its year-to-date output during the remainder of this month to avoid matching or beating that poor record.

Jeff Mikulina, who stepped down as director of the local Sierra Club chapter in order to take over as executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation, didn’t take long to make a splash on the editorial page of the New York Times.

And a Seattle Times editorial praises that city’s mayor for his $9 million plan to address rising youth violence. We’ve got the same problem here, but public officials here seem content to leave their heads firmly embedded in the sand (or, some would say, in a more anatomically correct place). Honolulu really is long overdue on an action plan to address gang-related and other youth violence with some significant resources.