My golf buddies at Wailua have a saying, “Let your clubs do the talking.” Seems like only yesterday we suffered through election talk with the incumbents boasting how well they performed and how much they accomplished while in office. New
My golf buddies at Wailua have a saying, “Let your clubs do the talking.”
Seems like only yesterday we suffered through election talk with the incumbents boasting how well they performed and how much they accomplished while in office. New office-seekers promised meaningful change to the status quo, and they would limit government and cut spending, improve the economy, help small businesses succeed, solve the high unemployment, cut taxes, and on and on. Soon we have to experience another round of boasting.
Well how did those winning the last election score? Have you seen any meaningful change? The economy continues in the worst down cycle since the Great Depression. Congress spent trillions on stimulus for the economy and bailouts for the nation’s major industries with negligible results. Not good for persons looking for work. National unemployment rate is hovering at an almost-sufferable 9.7 percent. But the total out of work is 16.6 percent counting those who have given up looking for a job. Kaua‘i’s unemployment rate is a whopping 8.2 percent.
Unemployment and inflation are the two-most-important, macro-economic elements of our free-market system. Inflation is not currently high although creeping up from last May to 2 percent. But don’t relax, the $13-trillion total deficit climbing each year will soon send prices skyrocketing: An important “talk story” topic for a later date.
Seems like every day I read how Kaua‘i must become self-sustaining. How can you self-sustain if out of work? Kaua‘i’s proposed sustainability plan equates to more tax subsidies. More taxes are not the answer to creating jobs. Previously I wrote in this paper urging the mayor to exercise his emergency powers to take steps to set up a program to combat joblessness during recessions. Local action is a more-conservative solution to the jobless problem in that national and state governments have not spent their way out of the recession. Primarily they authorize stimulus spending and provide unemployment benefits as the end-all. We are all Keynesian puppets manipulated by outdated economic theory. Yet, the solution can be simple at our local level by creating demand for our workforce. Job creation requires new production.
Several excellent comments came in following my comments to the mayor on establishing bond funding by the county. John Hoff from Lawa‘i proposed Western Renewable Energy’s $1 million offer to resolve Kaua‘i’s garbage and solid-waste/high-cost-energy dilemma. Kawika Moke from Kekaha wrote that PV solar electrical is the answer to all our electrical problems associated with dependency on foreign oil. He uses the example of the 36 units at Kekaha Plantation Elderly Housing electricity provided by sunshine on the PV panels. He asks why aren’t the rest of Kaua‘i residents aren’t using sunshine to generate electricity.
Brad Parsons from Hanalei expanded on my alternative of municipal-bonding authority. He proposes to use the bonds to finance photovoltaic solar and possibly solar water heaters to private property. “Too simple… can’t work… no can,” he goes on, yet it is successfully working in Berkeley, Calif. since last summer with the Financing Initiative for Renewable and Solar Technology Program (FIRST). In the past year many other municipalities have copied the program.
A key point, he continues, is that the idea caps electricity costs to the property owner with the solar installation cost spread over 20 years, but the electricity itself would basically be free from the sun’s energy. As volatile utility rates based on liquid petroleum go higher in the future, a major concern on Kaua‘i and in Hawai‘i, the savings to the property owner would be greater. Those savings will create localized economic multipliers.
Gov. Lingle does get credit for introducing several bills in the last session to help create jobs, but they were all voted down by our one-sided legislature. Included was a bill for bonding authority to the counties along Parsons’ proposal above. The bill was sabotaged by our own District 14 representative. That was an “out-of-bounds shot” for the unemployed on Kaua‘i. How do the jobless on the North Shore like her score? She was quoted in this paper recently saying the federal government is looking into a second round of funding stimulus money to state governments … “to stimulate recovery, the government has to spend money.” Wow! Now that would really be more wasted shots.
We need to improve our workforce handicap. Wailua Golf Course officials establish rules of conduct for golf play. “Ready Golf” is required to speed up play as the course is generally packed with players. It requires that when you get to your ball you go ahead and hit, not waiting for slow players. It forces slow movers to get off their duffs and catch up with the group. We need a similar rule in the mayor’s office for a “ready-go” project to take effect at the start of a recession so we don’t have to wait for slow-moving Keynesian job fixes.
The current, long-running recession is evidence that we have to take action at our local level as Congress and state legislatures have no practical solutions. When a recession ends the program can be shelved until needed for the next one. With our dependency on tourism, any hiccup in the Mainland economy immediately hits our shores. One remedy would be that a huge number of workers can be temporarily employed by private contractors limited to Kaua‘i residents to install photovoltaic solar on the island’s commercial and residential structures.
I use the solar project as an example. If you have practical, self-sustaining ideas for job-creation that pay their way without requiring more taxes, send them to the mayor’s office and to The Garden Island. Some economists are predicting a double-dip recession is on the way.
• Ron Holte is a Kapa‘a resident and former chair of the Kaua‘i Republican Party.
