Thursday, June 26, 2008

Hawaii Mayor Calls Out the Opposition

It's not often you see this but I wish more Mayors would hit back at the auto industrial complex. Mayor Mufi is trying to build for the umpteenth time in Hawaii's history a rail system for Honolulu, a very dense city. Basically though, he slams the media for giving surrogates of the Reason foundation too much air time.
Mayor Mufi Hannemann criticized the media for doing a poor job of challenging opponents attempting to stop the city's planned $4 billion rail-transit project, prompting him to spend campaign funds to take out advertisements.

In his first interview since ads ran in Honolulu's two daily newspapers last weekend, Hannemann said yesterday he stands by his assertions that the local anti-rail campaign is backed by mainland companies and individuals connected with the oil and automobile industries.

These guys are big rabble rousers that spread a lot of misinformation. It's funny that these guys only fight in regions that don't have rail yet because they can't beat back the facts on the ground. But everywhere they fight they fail and move on to the next city without. This however is the funniest comment of the bunch:
All three local rail critics denied Hannemann's assertions, calling them "ridiculous," saying they have not accepted any money from mainland companies. "We have not received a penny that we did not raise locally," said Slater, a vocal critic of the 20-mile rail system from Kapolei to Ala Moana.
Cliff Slater is associated with the Reason Foundation as an Adjunct Scholar. The Reason Foundation has gotten at least $321,000 from Exxon. Their funders also include the following; Chevron, Exxon, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Daimler Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, National Air Transportation Association, Western States Petroleum etc etc. Hmmm...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hawaii is the most remote 'large' market in the world. Its insanity for them to not try to wean themselves off oil. They import 100% and it is thousands of miles from any oil.

Not to mention the refineries there have very limited capacity for heavy sour crudes.

Honolulu: Most dense, full of tourists who can't bring their cars, good year-round weather.

Although a future with $200 a barrel oil will ruin their tourist industry ...

Unknown said...

tourism in the future will only be for the wealthy. and not just in Hawaii. in the mountains of Appalachia we are almost completely dependent on tourist dollars and they have all but dried up. kick em in the balls mr. mayor. the real estate lobby here is has successfully pushed through local regulations that forbid wind farms and it is very windy here. its the same fight everywhere; wealthy and powerful lobbies against common sense.