 I said, you said, he said, she said. This is, he said, she said. I'm Jay Fidel, and that is Marianne Sasaki. Yes, I am. My buddy and a fabulous host on Think Tech. She does life in the law every Wednesday at... One to 130. One to 130. But every now and then we get together and we do, he said, she said, and we compare notes, and wow, the incredible things that flow out of that. We're gonna talk about politics today. Marianne loves politics. I love politics. It's my favorite, it's my hobby. Well, it may be my vocation. Who knows? Well, we'll see about that. You run the right road for that. We have a lot of politicians here. I mean, they come, they go. It's really interesting. So, but I think people have to understand politics. They have to understand how the system works. They have to understand how to make good choices. They have to figure out what's going on. The politics, people say it's a dirty business and all that, it's a blood sport, but the fact is it's how we govern ourselves. It's how we govern, that's right. And if we don't pay attention to it, it will do things that we don't like. Oh, yes. It may do things we don't like anyway. Oh, yes. But we'll have greater control if we participate in the process, which is what a detox will say. It's tumultuous. Yes, I agree. So the first thing on the deck, I brought in my primary ballot, okay? And it says, State of Hawaii Primary Election, August 13th. I guess I got to send it in pretty quickly. It's the end of this week. Yes. And it says, you got to declare yourself in a Green Party, Nonpartisan, Democratic Party, American Shopping Party, Constitution Party, Republican Party, Libertarian Party. And so you declare yourself. And so it's really interesting. It's one page, it's one page and a half. So what will we get on here? If you're a Green Party, there are no candidates. I don't know why you have to declare yourself if there are no candidates. And you can only vote for your party, strange. Then there's a Nonpartisan ballot and there's a guy named Cal Griffin running for House of Representatives in Congress. Democratic Party has a bunch of people running for the U.S. Senate, all Democratic. Christensen. Brian Schatz, I know. Honing Church, Reyes, Schatz, and Miles Schirritori, I know him. I don't know, I mean, I know of Brian Schatz, I don't know, I mean, I don't know, I haven't been following this race that closely. I think Schatz is a sure way. He's the favorite, for sure. Then we got U.S. Representative. This is Democratic Party. We got Ahua Issa, she used to be in the legislature, I think. We have Colleen Honabusa, she's the favorite. Howard Kim, Javier Ocasio. We had him here for, you know, A show? Yeah, well, no, we don't call it a show. It's a... A cast, a webcast? It's a speaker's corner. Oh, okay. You know, five or 10 minutes, he was here. Sam Pulitasi, Lay Sharsh Davis, Steve Tatai, I don't know those people. I don't know them. And for the state senator now, we have Kim Coco Iwamoto, Keoni Nakoa, Carl Rhodes, he's incumbent. Oh, yes? Yeah, so he'd be the favorite. And then for the state Representative, District 25, we have Unopposed Sylvia Luke, very powerful woman. She's the chair of the House Finance Committee, very powerful. Okay, then we got American Shopping Party, of course, I never heard of them until I look at this. John Guffrey and the Constitutional Party Unopposed, I guess, I mean, within the American Shopping Party for U.S. Senate. And the Constitution Party has Joy Allison for you. This is really interesting how much is going on here. Republican Party for U.S. Senate, John Carroll, he came down a week or two ago. Eddie Perkowski, John Roco, all for the Republican Party Senate, for the U.S. House, Sirlene Ostrov. And for state senator, District 13, we have Rod Tam. He's a guy that was in, he was in the Hawaii legislature that he went to the city council. Then he got in all kinds of trouble about using campaign money to take his constituents out to lunch. Oh well, it happened. But he came back, he's running again, he's walking the streets, I tell ya. Then the Libertarian Party for the Senate, we've got Michael Kokoski, and for the Federal, you know, for Congressional U.S. House, Allen Yim. And for state senator, District 13, Harry Ozolz, that's me. Then we've got on the back side, we've got Office of Hawaiian Affairs, we've got a lot of people running. This is Hawaii resident trustee, and everybody can vote, you know, you don't have to be Hawaiian to do this. Bo Kahuwi, Robert Lindsay, and Milly Lonnie B. Trask. She was on the show a few weeks ago. We're influential. Yeah, she's a lawyer. She's the one who hated geothermal, but now she wants to do geothermal, so. Then we've got Jerry Flowers, Molokai resident trustee, Jerry Flowers, Alapai Honapi and Colette Machado. At large, we know some of these guys, Kalei Akina, he's our host on Monday. He'd be my favorite, Daniel Anthony. Haunani Apollonia, she'd been with, oh, a long time. Douglas Crum, Leone Kalima, Kalei Makakao, and Paul Mossman, that's an old Hawaiian name. And then for the City County Mayor Contest, listen to this for, you know, a primary. Maybe it's more than a primary. We've got Kurt Baker, Zachary Byrd, Kurt Caldwell, Ernest Carvalho, Peter Carlyle, Charles the Jew, Lawrence Friedman, he's been here. Tim Gary, Ron Hokely, he's been here, and Lillian Han, and Mike Powers. Oh, Carvalho was here, too. So that's more than a primary, I think. That's kind of like the election, I think. I think it is. Well, what do you think about it? I mean, you know, I think it's gonna come down to Dejeu and Caldwell, yeah? So, Yeah, and Dejeu was running well, and he's collecting a lot of money, and he seems to actually have an edge over Caldwell. I know he does, but I don't know, you know, Caldwell is like, he's still plugged into the machine, I think. He's plugged into the machine, the machine's gonna help him get votes, and I mean, he's really plugged in. I mean, I saw something in the paper recently. He earns approximately $135,000, $140,000 for his salary, but then he's got this bank directorship that pays him $200,000 more. Wow, can you do that? While you're in office, can you still do that? I guess so, yeah. That doesn't seem right. I mean, he's doing pretty well. I mean, he's actually getting more from the directorship than he is from the city. Should we talk about our favorite subject, Hart? Yeah, okay. That, you know, is this a mandate election? It pretty much is, yeah. Yeah, so you like Dejeu because he's gonna stop, he's gonna stop rail, what is he gonna do with rail? He's gonna stop rail, but I'm, no, I like, actually, Peter Carlisle, but- Carlisle's not gonna stop rail. No, he's not gonna stop rail, and I'm pro-rail. And I'm telling, I know, I understand that it's over, but I did, I understand that it's not well planned out. I understand all the arguments against it, but I think that just the art, having a rail in place will change the city. It will change the city, and how people interact in the city. Will it change it for the better or the worse? The better, I think, because you'll have people of all strata using the subway, although maybe people still insist on using cars, but if it's good and it's fast, there's like no reason to use the hassle of a card, like get to the office or whatever, it's better to just jump on a train and jump off a train. But I mean, your heart has been fraught with problem. My heart? Your heart? I don't, my heart's fine. Oh, yes, your heart. But I feel that rail is the road to perdition. Why? We can't afford it. I know. You know, we have unliquidated liabilities. We can't pay the state retirement system. We can't pay the city retirement, billions. We can't fix the roads, they're still a mess. But would you advocate? We have sewage problems. We have energy issues that's gonna cost us a lot of money to go to clean energy. Well, you know there's an answer to that, right? Raise taxes. Well, you know we have the highest sales tax calling it that loosely in the country because of the way it applies to everything. Everything, it applies to literally everything. It's really hard. Doing business in Hawaii, you pay, you pay. We have a very high income tax, relatively speaking. Our property tax is low but watch, it's gonna get higher, it's the place. So you know, I think we're gonna wind up paying these unliquids. You know we had a program a year ago about unliquidated liabilities in Hawaii. And the estimate I got from the speakers on and off, you know, their public statements was when you tally it all up, it's about $40 billion. We can't afford it. Think of Puerto Rico with 70 billion. We're not far. No, we're not far. But then what would you, would you have them just cut their losses and stop the planning and stop everything and just cut their losses and take them? Let me, mayor. I'd love to have you, mayor. And I would tear it down. You would tear it down. I would tear it down. Or I'd stop spending money on it and over time tear it down. But would you advocate another idea in place? I mean, do you advocate the idea of mass transportation? I mean- Absolutely. Absolutely. Mass transportation are the best bus system in the world, right here. No reason we can't do that. We did doing pretty well until they started pulling the money out of the bus and putting it in the rail. Which is another offense to good planning. Yeah, I would build a great bus system or rebuild it in a case. But the bus system is still victim to the traffic problems, which are terrible here. You have to put everybody from the car into the bus. You don't have so many cars. Yeah, well then you have to sell that idea to people. I think it's a harder sell. Well, you have to sell rail to the people too. Well, it's a little bit of a different thing. You're not gonna do it, mayor. I know. You want to go- I'm on the losing side. You want to go to Costco, load up your car with all that stuff, cheap price, take all that stuff home, restock your house. You can't do that on rail. Never. Well, we used to do it in New York. I mean, we do it, but it's different. It definitely is not the same as- This is a climate society. When I came here, when I came here in 1965, I got out of the airplane and there was a taxi cab pick me up and it was actually a Cadillac. And I, you know, come from New York. Cadillac, taxi cab, they don't do that. But people in Hawaii love their cars. And, you know, I've seen all the dealers make all the money over time. I mean, to be a dealer is to be like king. It is, it really is. I found that out this past weekend when I met somebody whose father was a car dealer and the person I was with whispered to me, he knows everybody. He knows everybody. And they keep on selling. And this, you know, in Bermuda, you can only have so many cars and you go to ride a bicycle, isn't it? We don't really favor bicycles. We favor cars. We don't favor electric cars, actually. I mean, we haven't made much progress there. We have very, very little progress on bicycles, even though we have the best weather, arguably the best weather in the world so far anyway, till climate change changes that. But, you know, I'm just thinking we have really blown it in terms of, you know, modular transportation. You know, we have really blown it in terms of transportation that works with the environment. You know, if they lose people like you, then they've lost everybody because you're one of the most forward-thinking people I know and you understand, you know, the importance of mass transportation and if somebody like you is not supporting it, they've really blown it, I think. I've never supported it. Really? And I, you know, I started out not supporting it because the Hanuman administration was cramming it down our throats. And it was. And people weren't really thinking about it. Nobody was talking about it. The neighborhood board system was systematically separated from that conversation, I can tell you. And that was during the Hanuman years. I mean, he was gonna jam it down our throats and he did, and that hurt him bad politically. So now we have, you know, the legacy he left and it's gonna cost more and more. If you think it's gonna be limited at what's the latest, six or seven billion, think again. Right. It's gonna be 10 or 12 or 14, who knows what, by the time it's finished. I don't think we even calculated. No, I don't think they know how much it's gonna cost, actually. You know, we really don't think they really can fathom. It's finished with all the arguments on condemnation. It's gonna cost a fortune. Right, right, right. Condemnation and where it's gonna go, where it's gonna end, where it should end, what it should do, I mean it's. This is the ultimate can down the road because what's gonna happen here is that you and I, whatever we say, we're not gonna pay the price. It'll be somebody else later. And those kids are gonna write checks for all their whole lives. That's right. Think of taxes. And they're gonna be skating on the possibility of Puerto Rico. You know, we have lots of bills to pay. When we come back, I wanna tell you about something I heard on NPR today. That is along the very same lines. Okay. And this morning, how about a six hour show, Marianne? Oh sure, let's do it. Let's do a marathon. I knew you'd say that. We'll do a fundraising marathon. That's what we could do. Aloha, my name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Health Care in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. For a very healthy summer, watch Viva Hawaii. We're giving you the best tips and with our best health coach here. So Viva health coach. Viva la comida saludable. Hi, I'm Keeley Iacina, President of the Grass Root Institute. I'd love you to join us every week, Mondays at 2 o'clock p.m. for Ehana Kako. Let's work together. We report every week on the good things going on in our state as well as the better things that can go on in the future. We have guests covering everything from the economy, the government, and society. See you Mondays on Ehana Kako at 2 o'clock p.m. Until then, I'm Keeley Iacina. Aloha. Bingham, well, staying on the theme of politics, we really have to talk about your unfavorite guy, Trump. Well, yeah, I wanted to talk about my unfavorite guy, Trump, but I didn't want to bring him up because we were talking about municipal politics, but did you see the letter that all the National Security Advisors wrote that said that he didn't have the demeanor to be Commander-in-Chief? It was in the New York Times today. About like 50 National Security Advisors drafted a letter and said that he did not have the knowledge, he did not have the demeanor, he didn't have the character to be... At least like pushing the button. Can you imagine? I mean... Oh, it's terrible. I mean, he represents a constituency that could be completely irresponsible. But you know, I want to tell you something that's interesting about him, and I think people should be aware. People who think Hillary Clinton might be such a lock. He's raising funds like Bernie Sanders raised funds in little amounts, and that like ground, that ground roots, grassroots groundswell, that indicates that he has a tremendous amount of support out there. People clearly want to come out and vote for him. So I wouldn't trust too much the polls and things. I wouldn't trust the National Security Advisors either. Well, they're not gonna be able to stop him. No. The people who are gonna vote for him don't care what the National Security Advisors have to say. They're part of the establishment. Right, right. Well, and now the Republicans have a new, maybe a new candidate, a new anti-Trump candidate too. His name is Evan, it's McMillan, I think. Evan McMillan. Sure. And Trump will make hamburger out of him. Yes, and I'm terrified if they even try. I mean, I'm just terrified of a constitutional crisis. I really am. On the day, like a month before the election, the Republican Party decides they want this other guy, and how are they gonna try to depose Trump, and it's just... Trump is a walking constitutional crisis. He is. You know, if he doesn't have one before the election, he'll have one, if he wins, he'll have one after the election. I mean, he's not part of the system. I think he's ever read the Constitution. Doesn't respect the system, but... I think he's ever read the Constitution. No. I don't even... I don't think he knows. I think he's really ignorant on so many points. Yeah. Well, we talked about... But the people who would vote for him don't care about that. Yep. They don't care that their president be qualified. They don't care. They're disgruntled and very unhappy and want somebody to voice their anger. And he voices anger very well. That's like... I must say he does that very well. I don't think people realize... Back to your national security group. I don't think people realize exactly what we're in right now. We have skirmishes all over the world. Right. You know, the war on terrorism is a world war. I don't know if people realize that, but it's a world war three, really. Because it's against everybody, you know? And last night I saw a movie about Stuxnet. It was a documentary revealing what was going on about Stuxnet. Very, very interesting movie. Donald Trump wanted to see this movie. It's called Zero Days. Zero Days. I want to say it. It's about the development between the U.S. and Israel of the Stuxnet virus, which was pointed... It went worldwide, but it was pointed at the centrifuges in the nuclear facility in Iran. And it blew them up. And it's a whole new... I mean, it offers all kinds of new possibilities. Was this developed by Israel? I mean, or developing the... In a partnership? I think the code was done here in the U.S. Oh, yeah. By the National Security Agency. Yeah. Anyway, and CIA, they fight this war. They have a command called the Cyber Security Command. And up to that point, they were not doing aggressive moves to aggressively destroy things. This was different. And this was... Right now we live in a kind of world of deterrence, like nuclear deterrence. It's cybersecurity deterrence. But everybody's got weapons that can really wipe the other guy out. And in case you think it's just theoretical, if I knocked off your power grid, people would die. Oh, you know, I saw a movie actually recently about the failure of power. It was like one of these kind of futuristic movies where the sort of the apocalyptic future. And the apocalypse was actually the end of electricity, end of power. And literally everything falls apart. Everything falls apart. And that's why it's always so scary when there's a blackout in New York because people are always afraid that it's some kind of strategic hit. And yeah. One of the airlines was down yesterday, today. And I haven't read the article exactly what happened, but it struck me that just as easily that could have been that the computer was hacked by somebody overseas, including by a state actor. But are we really capable of... Well, first of all, are there state actors anymore? See this movie. I will. And you will see we're capable of amazing things. We and everyone else. State actors have the money, have the resources. You know, after we did the Stuxnet thing on Iran, they became a matter of national pride, nationalism. So they brought in all kinds of talented people from their own kids, their own population. And now they have a very robust cyber security command themselves. Right? Stuxnet could not happen again. Not the same way. But you know, I mean the point is that we are at war in terms of cyber security. Absolutely, absolutely. It is devastating what could happen. It could bring the whole civilization down with lots of people dying. Absolutely. So the question is, does Trump understand this? It's not so much pushing a button for atomic weapons. It's all kinds of buttons now. It's weapons of mass destruction. It's cyber security. It's like if you really let go, let her rip the way he talks about it. Well, yeah. He seems to think that nuclear weapons are toys and that the toy in his arsenal is a war of deterrence. Right. Do you think Hillary Clinton understands? I don't know how well, I don't think she understands so much either. I don't know. I don't think her approach to world security is, I don't know. It doesn't seem to be working, so I don't know. Well, she's stepped in it a few times. Yeah. I don't think she's that vassal with high tech things. Right. So the question is, how do you really organize that? The people in this movie, some of whom were high level people around cyber security, seemed to be pretty sensitive. But the organization itself, the establishment itself, they didn't do a good job. And... So we need to have like another Manhattan project or something like that with respect to cyber security. I think we do. There needs to be a... I think we do. I know, wouldn't that be the right way? I mean, the amount of money that went into cyber security in the last few years, like $50 billion. I don't know how often they spent that, but that's the kind of budget we're talking about. But it needs to have the finest minds in the country working on it. It needs to be super high priority project. You know. So just remember though that they, for a fraction of what we would spend, given wages and whatnot, somebody else can do the same thing. So we think we got an angle on them. We may have an angle in some ways, but they could respond. Well, they could respond, but I like to think, I don't know if this is still true, that the talent remains here. The best talent in the world remains here. I don't think either China could. In a war of cyber security, I would venture to say there will be no winner. Really? Yeah. I mean, imagine cities going down, incapable of running anything. And certainly medical things would be over. You wouldn't have medical things. So just imagine your day with all the contingencies in your day and nothing would work. Right, right. That was one thing this movie was so great at showing. Everybody was so dependent. It was a few years in the future and everybody was so dependent on electricity to like read and just all kinds of things. And so we're dancing at the edge of a precipice. That's scary. See the movie, you know? Great. Send a note to Donald Trump. He should see the movie. So how do you feel? Is he gaining or losing these days? Hard to say. I think that's really hard to say. I think when he was relentlessly attacking that poor Muslim family, he was clearly losing. But you know, Americans have short memories and that'll have been a blip in, you know, in the dog days of summer and there'll be some other thing that'll come along. It's just amazing. I talked a little bit about this on the weekend. It's just amazing that the Republican Party is under assault from every direction. It's under assault from the likes of Donald Trump. It's under assault from the Tea Party. The whole party is just unraveling as the most fascinating thing to watch. They did it to themselves, you know, Marianne? Yes, I think they did. They did it with the Tea Party. Oh, I definitely think they did it. It was more important that they made their point. It was more important than the national budget of keeping the national government working. I mean, how dare they do that? I mean, I feel they all breached their oath of office. Yeah, they have fiduciary duty to the people. That there were some spiteful thing they decided not to play. And that's really totally irresponsible. And I think it was just a matter of time before, you know, the groundswell against them came back. But it's just, I mean, if I was a Republican, I would be a wreck because I mean, I just don't think you can see, I think Donald Trump isn't really a Republican. He doesn't represent the party. I mean, he's nothing like Mitt Romney. He's nothing like the Bushes. You know, people sometimes float the idea that he's like a secret weapon to get Hillary Clinton elected. And as crazy as that sounds, it's almost plausible because he's such not a Republican. I mean, he's so not a Republican. So what do you think? You think he's gaining or losing? Well, I think it's, you know, I think he's creating a constitutional crisis. I think Republicans, you know, have been working towards this for a while. But he's the perfect answer for what they've been doing or the perfect support for what they're doing. But, you know, I think what's happening now is, you know, the government is at great risk. If he wins, you know, our country is at great risk. The Republican Party is obviously, you know, in a transformation of some kind. It's not a good thing. I mean, there was never a doubt that George Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, no, that's the father, right? The son, the Herbert George Bush Jr. W. W, right. It was never a question of whether or not he could govern. I mean, he might be governing in ways that you disagreed with, but I mean, there wasn't an actual dispute as to aptitude. Would this guy really be able to understand the nuances of the problems facing the American people and make a well thought out decision? But I mean, I don't have any faith that Donald Trump could do that. I don't think he wants to even do that. I told you, I think he just wants to win the presidency. I don't think he really has that much interest in being president. I mean, it's gotta be a pretty tedious job. All the world cares on your shoulder, no adulation, constant criticism. I mean, it's hard to be the president. I don't think he would like that position so much. He loves doing what he does. Yes. He loves the adulation. He loves the applause. He's a showman. He's like a T-bar now. He loves people arguing over him, you know. Right. This is what he was born to do. But when he has to do the drudgery of actually governing, actually, you know, tussling with Congress, actually, you know, attending state dinners, going to summit conferences, you know, can you see him at like a G8 summit conference or something? I can't even see him. I can see him taking something which some people might feel, you know, is boring and hard work and making it into a real mess. Great. For his own gratification. So I hope we never get there, you know. And we still have a few, several weeks, what, 12 weeks, 13 weeks? Yeah, it's like three months now. And it's getting close. And I hope nothing really puts Hillary off the track because between the two of them, she really has to win. Are we almost done? I have one thing to say about Hillary. Say it now. Hillary is not blameless. She continues to insist that the FBI said she did nothing wrong. Instead of taking responsibility for what she's done with her emails, she just continues to insist on her innocence. I don't understand why she's doing this. So she's not, I just wanted to give a little fair time and say that she's not utterly without blame, but she's not, she's not Donald Trump, that's for sure. I mean, he's just much easier to... Where are we getting our leaders these days? What forces make them, you know? Citizens United is not helping us. We need millennials. We need to get the baby boomers out. So far as I can tell, they've mucked things up. And that's why the baby boomers have to do this. They have to get these ballots. This is the ballot of the ballots. You can't not be involved. If you're not involved, you're gonna pay a huge price. We are all gonna pay that price. Yes. We're gonna be involved. Oh, we must be involved. Thank you, Marianne. That's Marianne Sasaki. He said, she said, we said.