The warnings were broadcast on all the TV and radio stations, and published in the newspapers.
Then the sirens wailed at 6 AM on Saturday February 27, 2010.
But they were four days late. The Akaka bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday February 23.
What? This article is about the Akaka bill? But the title says “Tsunami Hits Hawaii.”
The impact of the Akaka bill on the State of Hawaii will be far worse than any earthquake or tsunami. Buildings, roads, and human bodies can be repaired after a natural disaster. But once the Akaka bill is enacted and signed into law, it will put in motion a series of legal, economic, political, and social changes that will shake apart Hawaii to its very foundations and inundate our multiracial aloha with the floodwaters of separatism and hatred.
The damage from the Akaka bill can never be undone. It’s worse than Thelma and Louise, in the movie, accelerating as they drive over a cliff. Remember in the nursery rhyme when Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall (this time Akaka pushed him off) and shattered into a million pieces? Not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could put him back together again.
Janet Napolitano is President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security. Early in her term she famously refused to use the phrase “terrorist attack”, replacing it with “man-made disaster.” Well, the effects of the Akaka bill would be precisely that — a man-made disaster. The big fight between Lingle/Bennett vs. Inouye/Akaka/Abercrombie for the past three months has been whether a previous version of the Akaka bill should be replaced by an even worse version. The choice is: Which would you rather have — a catastrophe or merely a disaster?
The Akaka bill has indeed been a form of terrorism — a looming disaster threatening to destroy Hawaii as surely as Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon is a looming disaster preparing to destroy Israel. For a decade the Akaka bill has been threatening Hawaii, revived every two years when it is reintroduced in a new Congress. It’s like those old horror movies “The Mummy” and “The Mummy’s Hand” where the priest Kharis (Boris Karloff) periodically gives an Egyptian mummy three tanna leaves to bring it back to life temporarily. But if Kharis gives the mummy seven leaves (passing the Akaka bill) then it will be alive forever.
Governor Lingle and Attorney General Bennett enthusiastically supported the bill throughout their first seven years in office until suddenly that monster revealed its true nature and horrified them. They remind me of Dr. Frankenstein who was shocked when the monster he created (“It’s alive!”) was not happy to stay strapped down on the gurney in the laboratory, but broke loose and went on a rampage through town. Those pushing the Akaka bill have always insisted that “Native Hawaiians are entitled to parity and full equality with the Indian tribes.” Did Lingle/Bennett think they were kidding? Once an Akaka tribe is created, regardless of the exact parameters of the legislation, the tribe will keep going back to Congress for more rights and more handouts until it has grown into the monster it always wanted to be.
In the Bible’s Book of Job, there came a time when Job wanted God to prove he was really the Almighty. So God reminded Job of some of God’s powerful miracles. In Job 38:8-11, reminding how He had stopped the floodwaters, God asked “… [W]ho shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth … and said, ‘Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and there shall thy proud waves be stayed’?” God can stop a tsunami.
God help us.
”REFERENCES (interesting and mostly informal)”
*1. Some politicians and media people have been praising President Obama, and in awe of him, as though he is God. But when it comes to the Akaka bill, Obama seems more like the Devil. He has repeatedly promised to sign the bill if Congress passes it. Here’s a letter to President Obama asking him to change his mind, based on Obama’s own idealistic statements and personal background: https://tinyurl.com/bl9rvv
*2. 302-page book: “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State” 27 copies are available in the Hawaii Public Library system. A webpage providing cover, entire Chapter 1, detailed Table of Contents, and how to order the book, is at: https://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa
*3. The highly respected Beacon Hill Institute (Boston) did an analysis of the economic consequences of the Akaka bill, and estimated that the bill will cost the State of Hawaii perhaps $690 million per year in lost tax revenue, not including losses to the county governments. Download the report from https://tinyurl.com/9f6rxn
*4. Zogby poll released November 2009 shows most Hawaii people oppose the Akaka bill, and an even larger majority want a ballot referendum on it. https://tinyurl.com/yczuo3q
*5. Many other proofs that most of Hawaii’s people, and also most ethnic Hawaiians, oppose the Akaka bill were assembled at https://tinyurl.com/omewe
*6. From 2000 to 2010 there have been hundreds of major publications opposing the Akaka bill, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Republican policy committees in both the House and Senate, commentators in the local and national media, etc. Full text of the most important such publications have been compiled, and an index providing access to all ten years of them is at: https://tinyurl.com/5eflp
‘Dr. Conklin’s book “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State” is in the Hawaii Public Library, and also at https://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa’