O’ahu is a plutocracy, plain and simple. Perhaps it always has been, at least going back to 1893 and the Committee of Safety, the gang of businessmen who found the rightful Queen of Hawaii inconvenient to their sugar profits and got rid of her. Ostensibly we have a democracy but the candidates who win elections are usually the ones who are the best funded, and the best funded are puppets for special interests. We are still ruled by groups like the Committee of Safety. Bullies. Thugs in suits. Same as before, only now instead of making their money from crops they make it by paving over them.
Kioni Dudley is the rare person with the courage to stand up to the bullies. Here he is fighting Ho’opili at the Land Use Commission:
Dudley is running for City Council against Kymberly Pine, the incumbent. I don’t agree with Dudley on everything. He has made his share of mistakes. For a politician he’s a bit unpolished. But he fights for the right causes for the right reasons. He has guts, his ideas are good, and he sees clearly the problems that everybody else pretends don’t exist. He is a champion for agriculture and food security, and we need a leader like him on these issues badly. And the polished politicians all turn out to be total scumbags; I’ll take a Kioni Dudley over that lot any day.
I don’t know much about Pine other than that she is a Republican and she sided against people in Makakilo who live in townhouses on the issue of garbage collection. She was in favor of us paying for private garbage collection even though we pay taxes that cover public garbage collection, same as single-family home owners. Not cool. And when I scan through her campaign contributions, it appears she has received a hefty sum from DR Horton. How can you trust a politician to regulate and reign in the developers if that politician is funded by those same developers? You can’t.
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