And now for some local news.... Stop Rail Now

Here in lovely, tropical ville de Honolulu, we have been in yet another mass transit row. The third since I have been living here, as a matter of fact. To put in steel-on-steel rail or not, is the question. Well, a lot of the NIMBYs (not in my back yard) and PAVEs (people against virtually everything) have been causing a ruckus. This time the city has secured federal funding (something on the order of $3.5B) plus they have raised the excise tax by .5% in order to help pay for it.

The anti-rail folks don't really have a cohesive view of what they want or why we should not have "steel on steel" rail, they just know they don't want it. Their advertising and tactics have been misleading (in my opinion), not factual, and just plain out low. But it appears that they have stooped to a new low. We are in the middle of a mayorial election and our current mayor (Mufi Hannemann) is quite popular (I rather like him even in spite of not liking politicians).

This past week, someone put up a nasty web site (racist and vulgar) and then sent out an e-mail purportedly from Mayor Hannemann's campaign manager promoting the web site. Naturally, the source IP in the headers of the e-mail message was traced back to the Law Offices of John Carroll and Eric Ryan. Carroll and Ryan, of course, professes no knowledge of this and I suspect that someone that can pass the bar exam would be smarter than this anyway. But he has been an "anti-rail" supporter and he is letting the anti-rail supporters use his office. If they are using his office to stupidly slander people, then he should bear some of the responsibility.

The moral of this story? E-mail is traceable, kids. So play nicely.