An editorial in yesterday’s Hawaii Tribune-Herald reads:

Bill is Bad for Business, Bad for All Hawaii:

House Bill 2974, informally known as the “card check” bill, would have permitted labor unions to automatically be recognized whenever a majority of workers at a small business sign authorization cards. The bill also would mandate timelines for collective bargaining and impose binding arbitration in labor negotiations.

No secret ballot would be required, and there would be no independent supervision of the card check process.

Existing law requires a secret ballot election if 30 percent of the workers sign cards. The election, which is monitored by the government, determines whether the union is recognized.

When I first heard about this I was shocked to see that this bill targeted agriculture. Why in the world would our legislators want to target small papaya farmers and foliage growers? I am curious to see if the legislators choose to override the governor’s veto.

I’ve been writing in this blog that in the face of coming economic hardships, we need to make more friends and become closer to our families and community. We will need to help each other. This bill is disappointing because it will cause divisiveness, rather than togetherness.

It was another week of steadily rising oil prices, with crude moving from a low of $109 a barrel on Monday to a new high, over $117 a barrel, by Friday. By now the reasons for the continued climb are familiar – stagnant production, shrinking exports, increasing demand, a falling dollar, the flight to safety in commodities, declining U.S. stockpiles, and, of all things, the perception of an improving U.S. economy.

This week, several new factors contributed to the increase. Reports that Russian oil production slipped during the first quarter for the first time in a decade, coupled with assertions by senior Russian oilmen that Moscow’s production is not going higher, were troublesome.

Here is a link to a weekly report on the world oil situation. It is significant because it says that Saudi Arabia will be limiting its production of oil in order to save oil for future generations, which has serious long-term implications for oil importers. During the week the Saudis said they had trimmed output from 9.2 million barrels/day to 9 million.

We must be aware that their own middle class is growing and will want to use more of that oil internally, within their own country. So less and less will be available for export!

We need to move more decisively toward alternate energy. Geothermal comes to mind. HELCO needs to figure out how CAN. Not, “No can!”