I have finally put my finger on exactly what bothers me about the anti-TMT movement.
My entire career has been about planning for the future and adapting to our changing energy needs. It’s been about finding a way to force change in order to get us from here to there, and doing it in such a way that we take care of all of us, not just a few of us. That’s the fundamental principle we go by.
We know that it’s not the biggest or smartest or strongest who are going to survive, it’s the ones who adapt to change.
But they, the ones who are protesting the TMT, have made it clear that they absolutely refuse to compromise. They refuse to adapt to change.
This is the fundamental problem.
They have no plan for adapting to our changing energy situation, and I don’t know what their end goal is. My disagreeing with them has nothing to do with race or racism, but everything to do with their refusing to adapt. I’m waiting for them to make a plan, but what bothers me the most is their unwillingness to adapt to change.
We need solutions that will take care of all of us, not just a few of us.
***
There’s quite a discussion going on over at my Facebook page. A spokesman for Ku Kia‘i, the movement blocking the TMT people from going up to the summit of Mauna Kea, has filed a complaint of war crimes – of unlawful confinement, deprivation of a fair trial, and destruction of public property – in Canada. These war crimes refer to 31 protestors being arrested last month on Mauna Kea, despite what the group considers the illegal occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the United States, as well as the building and erecting of thirteen observatories currently on the mountain. More about this on the Hawaiian Kingdom blog.
Clearly this controversy is about the Hawaiian Kingdom, which is not due to any fault of the TMT. I am not against the Kingdom of Hawaii, but it appears to me that that process will take a long time to come to any ruling. Nothing has been decided yet. I will abide by a ruling, whatever it may be.
In the meantime, the TMT has followed all the appropriate U.S. laws, all of which allow them to start construction. We are a nation of laws, and we are following the laws of the USA. If we didn’t, we would have anarchy. Our leaders need to lead. The safety of the people is of number one importance.
It’s fine to save the world, but shouldn’t we take care of our people first? Why should our rubbah slippah folks forego 300 construction jobs, 120 full time jobs at first light, $1 million youth education, workforce development programs and $1 million in rent of which $800,000 would go to malama Maunakea and $200,000 would go to OHA? And, $26 million additional to the Big Islands economy – all because we want to make a point?
And all this is free money. No one else will ever give us this much free money for our rubbah slippah folk.
Interesting comments follow my Facebook posts about it:
One person noted that this is why the anti-TMT advocates have “lost all credibility – because they let the pro-sovereignty people hijack the movement and turn it into a completely irrelevant issue.” (He also posted a link to the Department of State’s procedures about how one legally renounces U.S. citizenship.)
Other commenters said:
• Any Hawaiian government, king or otherwise, would need revenue, and would probably jump at any opportunity involving a billion-plus dollar project. I really don’t think many TMT opponents have thought things through to the logical end.
• TMT and self determination are two separate issues. I believe the reason the self determination movement did not catch fire with most part Hawaiians is because tens of thousands of them are employed, own homes, have families, are retired, collect social security, pensions and are covered by Medicare. In other words they already have self determination.
• Most have not considered the loss of things like Section 8 housing, SSI, AFDC, Food Stamps, students loans and tax credits, the loss of tourism that would be inevitable if Hawaii were not under the aegis of the U.S. government, the huge loss of DoD dollars once the separatists kick the military out, the instasbility that would lead many of us to draw our assets out and park them in a safe place, government grants, etc., etc., The federal government expends $17 billion more in Hawaii every year than it collects in taxes. Is that what you call war crimes? The withdrawal of that money and the loss of other revenues resultant from separation would create a death spiral of deflation that would destroy the economy.
• Those that haven’t studied history (and I get the feeling there are far too many of them here) don’t realize that one of the reasons why Hawaiians lost their lands is because it was so hard to raise capital here, and easy to get it elsewhere. When someone needed cash, they ended up selling their property cheap to someone (usually a foreigner or someone who had access to foreign funds) at tremendous discounts, because there was so little capital in Hawaiian markets. If sovereignty happens, it is very likely to repeat that pattern again. Princess Ruth sold Paauhau ahupuaa to Samuel Parker for $1300 because she needed the money and no one else had any funds to buy it.
And it goes on from there.
