Hawaii’s Rough Economic Ride,Hawaiian Telcom New Management,Big Island Vistor’s Bureau Trying To Attract More Flights,More Illogical Legislative Bills,More On Kristine Kubat’s Incomprehensible Diatribe,Another SO2 Monitoring Site
It looks like the State of Hawaii is in for a economic rough ride the next couple years,according to the latest UHERO economic forecast. Which the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Advertiser reported on (here, and here).It should be interesting to see if this forecast rings true. In my view, I question the severity and when any economic rebound will happen. Higher oil prices are not going away.Which pretty much impacts the cost of everything. The latter will consequently make this economic slowdown more severe and any recovery farther out.
It is good to see that Hawaiian Telcom has shaken up management again with the hiring of Eric Yeaman as CEO.But I have my doubts this shakeup will do any good. Hawaiian Telcom has a uphill battle to stem land line losses to cellular phone companies and Oceanic Time Warner.
They really need to get their IPTV service up and running. So they can better compete against Oceanic Time Warner’s all in one bundles. But due to the way Carlyle purchased Verizon Hawaii in 2005, it didn’t leave them any financial flexibility to significantly improve the overall telecom infrastructure. For the IPTV service to succeed, Hawaiian Telcom needs to reduce the loop lengths. So more people can qualify for their 7Mbps/11Mbps speed tiers.Hence why they recently petitioned the FCC for Universal Service Fund support.
It appears the Big Island Visitors Bureau is trying to get the community to write letters to them in support of additional airlift to the Big Island, according to this HTH article.
On a related note, the legislature strikes again with the illogical legislation regulating the inter island airline market. Why does this seem like deja vu all over again ? This seems to be another boondoggle like on the lines of the nefarious gas cap.Apparently this legislation is awaiting Governor Lingle’s signature.Hopefully she doesn’t do the latter. Thus letting this business unfriendly legislation die quickly.
I stumbled upon this website while reading the reader comments here. Which shows detailed air quality statewide.
Lastly, I really liked this reader comment in response to Kristine Kubat’s “incomprehensible diatribe”.Which she really took an an unfair potshot at the residents of West Hawaii.
” That’s all Kona needs - another east-sider telling us how to “fix’ our problems.Way to go! Since you have all the answers, you can be the first to come out here, Kristine, and start planting the first trees, developing the first parks and so on and so forth, and then you can go back to your writing desk and toot your happy little horn about how you magically found the way to push through all the red tape and actually get the county council to listen to the needs of Kona’s residents.
Get off your high horse already. You live in a place where you have roads and malls and all that stuff that you feel Kona residents are being trivial about for requesting. I can bet if you lived in Kona, you’d be p!ssed, too - and you would ALSO see what a pain in the a$$ it is to get the freaking county council to do ANYTHING to improve life over here - and that INCLUDES things like adding public parks, sidewalks, options for mass transit and all that public betterment stuff you take for granted because you already have it there in Hilo. “
