Floored

I'm at home today because the vinyl flooring is going in. At least, I hope it is. One man showed up and the work order did not say he was to remove the old flooring. Nor did it show that a new cove molding was to be installed. Sigh. Will this never end?

In either case, I'll be back to work tomorrow - assuming they finish the flooring today. In a couple of weeks, they will do the carpets. We hope.

Floored Again

The good news is the sheet vinyl flooring is in. The bad news is the installer did not put in cove moldings where we wanted them to. So I guess we'll have them come back when the carpets are installed. Big Sigh.

Short Shrift Mode

I have to work on a legislative bill on revenue "enhancements." Some people call these enhancements "taxes". You might well think that also, but I couldn't possibly comment on that. I have to run.

Aloha!

Shifting Sands

The Kamehameha Schools, a private, not-for-profit school system is in hot water again. The Hawai'i-based school, founded by Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop and dedicated in 1887, is supposed "to devote a portion of each years income [from the trust] to the support and education of orphans, and others in indigent circumstances, giving the preference to Hawaiians of pure or part aboriginal blood..."

"I desire my trustees to provide first and chiefly a good education in the common English branches, and also instruction in morals and in such useful knowledge as may tend to make good and industrious men and women..."

Note that the will indicates that preference should be given to Hawaiians, but does not bar admission to anyone. However, as the schools developed, the number of qualified Hawaiian applicants consistently exceeded the number of spaces open for students. Hence, a de facto Hawaiians only school came into being.

Recently, the trustees began to expand the number of campuses by building a school on the island of Mau'i. With the opening of this school, for the first time in memory, there were more spaces than qualified applicants.

This is where it gets interesting. What to do? Do you allow admission to otherwise qualified non-Hawaiians? Or do you do outreach to get more qualified Hawaiian youngsters to apply? Or do you provide remedial services to bring more Hawaiian children up to a minimum level? Or do you take the quick way out and lower your standards and admit non-qualified Hawaiian applicants? It should take about 10 micro-seconds to come to the answer the trustees chose. Yes, they lowered the standards and admitted 13, otherwise non-qualified Hawaiian students. Even then, they still had one more opening. So they offered it to a token non-Hawaiian.

For a school that was founded on Christian values, one must wonder what values are being practiced here? Do you create citizens of high morals and industry by practicing situational ethics? Do you help model children's paths to success and self-esteem by letting them know that they are not smart enough but you will make special accommodations for them? Do you create trust in a system that cynically admits one non-Hawaiian, apparently as an effort to keep the U.S. Internal Revenue Service appeased (this being a non-profit organization, they are subsidized by tax payers by not having to pay certain taxes that for-profit organizations do, but in turn, the non-profits must follow US laws regarding non-discrimination)?

Even then, certain Hawaiians are in a tizzy over the admission of the lone non-Hawaiian student. They would apparently prefer to admit additional non-qualified Hawaiians, and to permanently amend the minimum qualifications, so that no non-Hawaiian will ever be admitted to the schools.

To that I say the hell you will. No one ever said the educating of our youth, Hawaiian or not, would be an easy task. But easy or not, it is vital to the health of our state, and our nation, that we do so. So many of our social problems go back to lack of a good education. To cheapen that education does not serve us well.

However, since the Kamehameha Schools is a private school, I do not propose that it be forced, by government edict, to admit everyone who applies for admission. But if it wants to keep its non-profit status, it had better think long and hard about its admission policies. And while preference to Hawaiians should be kept at the forefront, the school had better not otherwise bar qualified children of other races.

Aloha!

Testy Times

Many school districts, as a way of ensuring their high school diploma denotes some minimum set of competencies [Have we fallen so far that we need to check for minimum competency? Yes. We have. - ed.], have instituted testing which must be passed in order to graduate. Note that these are not college entrance exams, rather, they test for the barest minimum that an adult should have. Now comes this article from the Utah Desert News (see it here) where even these minimum competencies are considered to be too hard by some students.

While I agree with the value of not leaving any students behind, and I realize we must guard against systematic test bias, I don't think that means we should dumb down the test to a level where someone who did not attend/learn anything while in school could pass it. Whether the Bell curve is skewed to the right or the left, some students will pass the test and some won't. Instead of making the test easier, we should be working to bring those on the left side of the curve up as high as possible.

Batter Beans Pitcher

I saw this one on TV and figured this belongs in the man bites dog category. It seems Minnesota Twins baseball center fielder Torii Hunter [what kind of name is Torii? - ed.] didn't appreciate getting beaned by Cleveland Indians relief pitcher Danys Baez [and who the heck names their kid Danys? - ed.]. So, when the opportunity presented itself, Hunter threw the ball at Baez, hitting him on the leg.

Understand that I'm not a big fan of professional baseball. Personally, I don't think you can call many of the players "athletes." And their continuous bellyaching about low salaries and having to go on strike soured me on them years ago. But I think they've fallen to a new low in this instance. If it was up to me, anyone who beaned anyone would be subject to assault charges. But then, I guess it's just a game, so it must be okay to injure another person [don't get me started on professional boxing, where the objective is to put the opponent into a coma - ed.].

Through the Eye of a Needle

I'm working on an essay I'm tentatively calling "Through the Eye of a Needle." Some of you may know this is a Biblical reference:

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God - Matthew 19:24

The essay will look at the fall of the Democratic Party in Hawai'i due, to a great extent, becoming successful and putting personal greed before public service. As a possible example of this, I bring you this list from Rush Limbaugh (see it here). Yes, Mr. Limbaugh is perhaps not exactly a disinterested party. And no, he does not give the source of his numbers. But according to him, nine of the top ten richest U.S. Senators are Democrats. Obviously, just because someone is rich/successful does not mean they can not be good Senators. And in fact, I should be so lucky as to be that rich. But having said that, people naturally want to keep as much of what they have as possible and to gain even more. And if they don't balance that with what's best for the public good, something we expect our elected officials to do, then their love of money is acting as a bar from doing what they are supposed to do.

This problem is, by no means, restricted to Democrats, but I think there is a lot of hypocrisy about this on the part of many Democrats.

In either case, below are the opening paragraphs of my draft:

There is an observation, attributed to author James Michener's "Hawaii" , about the first missionaries coming to Hawai'i - they "came to do good, and did very well indeed!" Perhaps the same can now be said about the present day Democratic Party leadership.

Walk through the employee parking lots of public buildings and you will as likely find Mercedes, BMW, and Jaguar in specially reserved spaces as you will Chevy, Toyota, or Ford. Check the stock portfolios of the politicians in the legislature and you will more likely find Blue Chip industrial stocks as you will environment friendly ones. Check which schools these people send their children to and you will more likely find exclusive private ones than the inclusive neighborhood public school.

Within this context, is internally initiated reform possible? That is, can the Hawai'i Democratic party perceive the need for change and then renew and reinvigorate itself by instituting such change (without a major external threat providing the motivation)?

If the present state legislature is any indication, the answers may well be no, even when there is a credible external threat. There are significant misalignments between the economic, social, and political public mainstream and many legislators. Thus, sowing the seeds of public distrust, loss of faith, and cynicism.

Aloha!

It's Friday!

Ahead of Their Time

I just started reading The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance, Oxford University Press; ISBN: 0195136659, edited by Lester M. Salamon, and found an interesting table of information. As far back as 1982, years before business management mavens first thought of using public/private partnerships, privatization, contracting out, or reinventing government, as a way of minimizing cost, government was using this tool 60% of the time in the human services arena. See the table below.

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Field	Non-Profit	For-Profit	Government
Soc Svcs	56%	4%	40%
Empl/Trng	48	8	43
Hse/Comm Dev	5	7	88
Health	44	23	33
Art/Culture	51	<0.5	49
	42%	19%	39%

Have a Great Weekend Everyone - Aloha!