Okay. I have to admit that I’m not a grammar nazi, and I don’t know how the quotation marks and question mark in the title to this post are supposed to be placed….so if they are wrong, I’m admitting it in advance.
But on to today’s post.
I took part in a panel discussion this week around questions concerning the future news, and sustainable business models for assuring the public gets the news we need in the future. The panel–actually, two back-to-back panels over a two-hour period–was sponsored by ThinkTech Hawaii.
I didn’t want to be embarrass myself by being totally unprepared, so I did a bit of thinking beforehand, trying to think of ways to explain problems that I see in the way we deliver news.
Back when I was employed as an investigative reporter, I used to periodically go through an exercise that, I hoped, would help identify important issues that were being underreported and might therefore benefit from my digging in and taking a fresh look.
The question I start with is pretty simple. What are the “sacred cows” in town, powerful institutions, agencies, or people that impact the public in major ways but manage to remain behind the curtain of silence, for whatever reasons not subject to the kind of ongoing news reporting that leads to both public understanding and public accountability.
The dictionary defines “sacred cow” as “one that is often unreasonably immune from criticism or opposition.”
During Thursday’s ThinkTech Hawaii panel, I explained what emerged at the top of my list of current sacred cows.
I’ll get around to presenting it here, but first let me ask: What would be your answer to that question? What sacred cows would you identify as useful areas for focused investigation and reporting?
Share your suggestions here, please.
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The idea of pushing college education for all high school students.
The NYT has it most succinctly today:
‘What, Exactly, Is Tulsi Gabbard Up To?’
MooOOOOah! The biggest sacred cow in Hawaii is the plethora of Native Hawaiian racial entitlement programs. It’s politically incorrect to challenge them or even ask for justification. There are many hundreds of these programs, mostly paid for with federal or state government tax dollars, or “ceded land revenue”, which is basically the same as tax dollars because it is government money collected from the renting of government lands — money which otherwise would be available to pay for programs benefitting people without racial segregation. The usual justifications are: Native Hawaiians are the indigenous people of Hawaii (false, but so what even if true?); Hawaii rightfully belongs to them (no); They have the worst statistics for all bad things (false) and therefore need the help more than others (If help were given based on need alone regardless of race, then Native Hawaiians would get most of the help if it were true they are the neediest, and racial set-asides would not be necessary to make that happen).
Along with the financial entitlement programs there are race-based rights, or exemptions from laws, unthinkingly written into new legislation or rules such as who can go to certain places or erect things there without a permit, who can catch fish or sharks, etc.
Paving roads with hot black asphalt instead of modern cool surfaces
Sending fire trucks which weigh 19 to 30 tons on every emergency call is a terrible waste.
What do you propose instead?
OHA & DHHL , I’m sad to say.
Tim – NYT is selling weekly subscriptions @ bargain basement $1 because of just that kind of obvious slanted “Reporting” (it’s 2nd TulsiTakedown to Civil Beat’s 4). The problem is, these news orgs are funded by folks who thrive on life as it is, not on change. Lots of young people and adults, getting their news from alternative sources, are sick of the game.
Needed is a mainstream press that employs, at fair wage, real investigative reporters and let them report on sacred cows.
Daniel Inouye, for the better part of a century, living or otherwise.
I’ll see and raise you.
John Burns.
Not everyone can afford to live in Hawaii. But people can’t handle the truth.
Astronomy. (Is the TMT a conflict actually a conflict between two religious tendencies/movements?)
the impact of air travel on climate change. (A big one. Tourists must travel long distances to be our tourists, and Hawaii residents like to fly long distances, to Las Vegas and places like that.)
Unionization of state and county employees
I agree with David Stannard about Daniel Inouye.
I see Representative Gabbard as a former sacred cow , but Kate reminds us that she still has some worshipers.
Big Tourism.
Waianae Boat Harbor Illegal Squatter Subdivision.
“Nonprofit” service provider government contractors.
Marijuana profiteers and carpetbaggers.
Compact of Free Association fiscal impact.
Ceded land payments to OHA.
OHA spending on sovereignty schemes and associated lobbying.
Mazie Hirono’s cultivated new “badass” persona.
Tulsi Gabbard “first Hindu in Congress” nonsense tag.
Daniel K. Inouye International Airport naming.
Chinese investor real estate speculation.
The military!
Beachfront Development
David Keanu Sai.
There’s a lecturer at a London university who is hosting Keanu Sai to give his usual performance in which there will be nobody to cross-examine him and no contrary info will be given to audience. Sai is also touting an investment scam — a new issue of Hawaiian Kingdom government bonds redeemable only 5 years after the U.S. is expelled from a sovereign nation of Hawaii [i.e., never]. Using anonymous PO Box in Honolulu. See my new webpage containing my message warning the lecturer, which provides proof that there really is a Treaty of Annexation; that the Republic of Hawaii was internationally recognized as the rightful government at the time when it offered the Treaty voluntarily; and that there never was a U.S. military “occupation” of Hawaii. I gave the lecturer a short URL asking her to make it available to everyone who attends Sai’s performance and to include the URL in any course syllabi or publications she produces about Sai’s theories.
https://tinyurl.com/SaiColeman101519
My teacher friends always complain about the District offices of the DOE. TThe call them black holes that suck money and energy from the schools.