Two nice women were making the rounds of House offices at the Capitol yesterday offering coffee and cookies to staff and announcing McDonald’s legislative reception to be held Wednesday from 4-6 p.m, if I heard them correctly.
This has become an annual event, featuring displays by McDonalds and its vendors, along with lots of giveaways to legislators and staff.
The interesting thing is that I don’t see anything in McDonalds’ lobbyist expenditure reports that reflect these annual events.
During 2008, for example, McDonalds reported spending just $786.58 in each of the reporting periods during the legislative session, with each of five lobbyists getting just $157.31. No other expenses are reported. Nothing for organizing time. Nothing for giveaways, food and beverages, etc.
Here’s a link to the McDonalds expenditure reports for January and February 2008, and for March-April 2008. No evidence here that MacDonalds ever put on an event during the session.
It’s another case illustrating that either our lobbyist disclosure laws are either too vague, not communicated clearly enough, or just not adequately enforced.
PBN’s “Business Pulse Survey” asked this question of the week: “What do you think of Mike McCartney as new CEO of the Hawaii Tourism Authority?”
A bare majority were favorable or luke warm, while one-third of those answering said it was a bad move.
The vote count as of early this morning:
Great choice, 16%
Safe but uninspired choice 36%
Bad Choice 33%
Don’t know 14%
McCartney has bounced around from the legislature to the Democratic Party to HSTA to public television and so on. It would be interesting to see the list of minimum qualifications and desired qualifications for this position at the Hawaii Tourism Authority to see how well McCartney’s background matches the demands of the job.
I like Mike. But I also think that our visitor industry deserves someone with deeper personal experience, education, and training in the industry to run this agency. If it’s all about politics, hire a good lobbyist to handle that side of things and get a tourism heavyweight to lead the agency. At least that’s my view.
In any case, though, we had best wish Mike the best because it’s certainly a tough point in history to be taking on this task.
As a subscriber to Oceanic Cable’s RoadRunner service, I’m watching carefully as the company experiments with metered use. Here’s a somewhat unsettling consumer review from Texas. Fair warning.
And then…you really don’t have to watch this. Really you don’t. But it is quite amazing. I’ll say no more.
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I don’t consider metering of our internet use to be inherently unfair. To what extent are the charges justified and to what extent are they simply intended to force consumers to use Time-Warner’s services instead of using online Netflix, HuluTV or other online video delivery systems?
Unfortunately, the state and Federal governments have allowed for the rise of a very noncompetitive marketplace in broadband communications. Time-Warner has a virtual monopoly over cable. The infrastructure was paid for by regular folks wearing our hats as “consumers” rather than as “taxpayers,” but I am unsure why the distinction prevents effective government regulation when a monopolistic situation exists.
If “economy of scale” arguments put the cable company in a position akin to public utility companies like the electric company, let’s regulate them, take them over, or force them to allow other companies to transmit over their lines, just as the landline phone companies were forced to allow other long distance companies to offer service to consumers.
But if users of online Netflix (or other video services rivaling HBO) eat up all the available bandwidth, why should low bandwidth users be forced to share the cost of expanding the carrying capacity of the cable infrastructure? I don’t see a tiered system as inherently unfair.
Have you seen this one?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WofFb_eOxxA
I couldn’t watch the whole video, Ian. I just sat here stuck on the fact that I was watching a video about flushing items down a toilet and resolved that I couldn’t finish. Ew. Just my reaction.