Fox News Features Hawaii Reporter; Honolulu Rail Proposal is ‘Lunacy’; More Change – This Time in the Hawaii GOP

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Hawaii Reporter Featured on Fox News

Hawaii Reporter and editor/co-founder Malia Zimmerman were featured in FoxNews.com over the weekend.

Both Congressman Ed Case, D-HI, and Congressman Charles Djou, R-HI, as well as well known law professor and author Randall Roth, offer their perspective on HawaiiReporter.com’s growth over the last 9 years in the report by Garrett Tenney. Here is some of what they had to say:

She’s known for being fearless and tenacious in challenging assumptions and the status quo, says former Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii), and that has earned her some powerful enemies in Hawaii.

“Folks that work in the political status quo in Hawaii don’t really want any light shown on what they’re up to or why, and those folks don’t like Malia because she does shine a light. So they’d just as soon she go away, which she’s not going to do,” Case explains. …

“The Hawaii Reporter is one of those sources that I wouldn’t be surprised if virtually all the politicians read it, follow what she has to say, but they don’t necessarily say they do,” Case said.

When she started this site it was only every few days, she was doing it all by herself,” remembers former Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii). “Today she has picked up a number of respected journalists who have since lost their jobs with the merger of the newspapers or got spun off with the merger of the television stations…so she has a lot of prominent investigative reporters, columnists, and political cartoonists who used to be in the main stream media but are now with her.”

“People who are less than happy with politics in Hawaii view the Reporter as an essential source of information and points of view. They are more inclined to hold the politically powerful accountable as compared to mainstream media,” Roth explains.

Rail Project ‘Lunacy’

Well-known columnist Michael Barone wrote about University of Hawaii’s civil engineering professor Panos Prevedouros in a Washington Examiner piece he entitled “More passenger rail madness: Hawaii edition.”

“The latest news of a rail boondoggle comes from Hawaii, from a blogpost by Panos Prevedouros on Joel Kotkin’s newgeography.com blog. It seems the state of Hawaii wants to build a 20-mile heavy rail line on the island of Oahu that is estimated to cost something like $5.3 billion (by the city of Honolulu) or $7.2 billion (by the state of Hawaii), with the federal government kicking in something like $1.8 billion.
“The whole island of Oahu has a population of 953,000, far lower than any other U.S. metropolitan area with a heavy rail transit line; 3 miles of the line’s 20 miles would be in prime agricultural land and 12 miles would be in low-density suburbia, leaving only 5 miles in high-density areas of Honolulu. And I doubt that the overhead rail design is going to diminish the claustrophobic effect of the dense high-rise Waikiki neighborhood.
“Prevedouros points out that consultants’ estimates of rail transit costs and riderships tended to be wildly inaccurate, to the point of being ludicrous. This proposal sounds like lunacy, pure and simple.”
More Change – This Time in the Hawaii GOP
President Barack Obama, a Democrat from Hawaii, won his national election on the promise of “change.” In Hawaii, the GOP is going through change of its own.
The cash strapped Hawaii GOP is losing its Executive Director Dylan Nonaka.
Nonaka, who former Gov. Linda Lingle has on more than one occasion highlighted him as a rising star, helped former City Council Member Charles Djou win the three-way congressional election last May.
Nonaka is not leaving politics, but will run a newly-formed political consulting business, The Kahua Group. Here is the letter he sent to friends and supporters this weekend:
“As you may or may not have heard, my time on the staff of the Republican Party has come to an end and it is time for me to set out on a new course.  Although I won’t be employed by the party, I will still be deeply involved.  I remain dedicated to the cause of electing conservative leaders in our beautiful state and you can count on me to continue to fight to make that happen.

“Working at the party with so many truly outstanding people has been an indescribable honor and I look forward to building on those relationships going forward, just in a slightly different capacity. Professionally, I will be starting a consulting business, The Kahua Group, to continue to help candidates get elected and advance conservative principals in our state.  Most of you know this is something that has been in my long term plans for a long time and the time has come to make it a reality.  Check out our website (www.kahuagroup.com), like us on Facebook, and look for more to come in the near future.  And of course, let me know if you need some help.

“Personally, the ohana and I are moving to Kona.  Monica is going to go back to teaching and I look forward to my boys getting to spend more time with their grandparents and family in Kona.  In the next few months I will still be spending a lot of time on Oahu to complete the reapportionment plans for the state so I won’t be that far away.”

The Hawaii GOP continues to look for support for its operating funds and its capital campaign to “burn the mortgage” at its Kapiolani headquarters.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Congrats to Malia Zimmerman and the Hawaii Reporter for the recognition. A few more like that and the SA will have to be more careful.

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