 Yeah, welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidelis, the 3 o'clock block on a given Wednesday, and we are talking today about getting out. Getting out means looking at sacred cows, sacred cows here in Hawaii, okay? And we have somebody who does that, Danny de Gracia, and he is a journalist, a reporter, columnist of our civil beat Honolulu. And the title of our show is Why Hawaii is a Victim of its Own Neglect. It's about infrastructure, something he's written about before. And he has, may I say, a passion for the subject. Hi, Danny. Thank you for coming. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I like your introduction about sacred cows. In fact, when Civil Beat brought me on board, I told them that above all else, sacred cows make the best hamburger. So yeah, I let him in for a show. So you've written this recent column about it, but then also a year ago you've written about it. And I guess my first question is why? Why does this turn you on so much? Why is this something you've written about on multiple occasions? Well, you know, it's funny because I'm a political scientist, and so, you know, we've kind of gotten in the habit of saying things like, you know, if it wasn't for government, who would build the roads? The problem is here in Hawaii, government is not building the roads, and they're not doing a whole bunch of other things. And so, you know, I have always believed that good government starts with providing core municipal services that, you know, make a difference in people's lives and right in their community. So if we're not cutting the grass, if we're not paving the roads, if we're not maintaining the sewers, you know, if we're basically leaving this entire island in a very shabby and unkempt state, it doesn't reflect well on the higher functions of government. And so that's why it's something that I've been very passionate about. Yeah. So why don't you talk about the article you wrote only recently, which, you know, was just so interesting to me, but also compare that to the article you wrote a year ago? Yeah. So, you know, the article that I wrote about a year ago, we weren't even in the pandemic yet. And, you know, there was just so much neglect around Oahu. And so, you know, you'd go, for example, to a beach park like Waimanalo Beach Park. And at that time, there was probably like, you know, probably like two tons of garbage left in a heap right in the center of the parking lot. And, you know, it was just there for months and months. And, you know, I was thinking about it to myself. And I said, you know, this is atrocious. It's dangerous. You know, someone could get hurt. And then at the same time as I was, you know, just going about my day, I would, you know, just see ridiculous things like, you know, shopping carts, you know, floating in rivers. You know, there would just be burned out hulks on Kunia Road where I live. You know, and it just had a very collectively depressing and darkening effect on me. And so, you know, I reached out to my editors and I said, you know, you know, can I go around town and take some pictures and write about, you know, just what a terrible condition Oahu is in. And so we went ahead with that. And that was actually probably one of my most well-read articles at the time, I think, because everybody kind of connected with, hey, you know, how come there's so many shopping carts floating in, you know, Kalihi Stream or, you know, why is it that, you know, there's garbage in Waimanalo? Because, you know, these are really beautiful places. And I think that the experience, you know, for many people who live here, unfortunately, I'm what you might, you know, consider a transplant. But, you know, I've always visited Hawaii all throughout the 80s and the 90s when I was growing up. You know, I lived here from 1980 to 1985. And I, you know, in previous years never remembered Oahu in this kind of state. And so it's very sad. And it's something that I think that we deserve better on. And that's why I continue to harp on that. Yeah. Well, we like to connect the dots. You found a certain state of, sorry, state of affairs a year ago. Now fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when your article, your most current article about infrastructure appeared in Civil Beat. How do you connect the dots? Is it better, worse, the same? Well, you know, one of the good things about Rick Blangiardi is that, you know, he is very sensitive to the appearance of this city and this island simply because I think, you know, his background is corporate. And so having that private background, he understands the image that projects. Now, obviously, you know, he has it tough because there are certain, I guess you could say, unfortunate realities that hamper that, one of which, of course, is the ongoing pandemic. And then the other issue is just the cost, not so much the cost of daily maintenance, but the cost of getting things, you know, just back to where things don't look awful, you know, because things have just fallen so far that, you know, you fall behind. And it's very hard to play a catch up. So I think it's a little bit better now. And certainly, I do notice anecdotally, any time I write an article about the bathrooms look bad or the grasses and cut, I do notice that people are out cutting the grass all of a sudden conveniently or whatever, I don't know if that's correlated or whatever, but it's absolutely correlated. I'll tell you now. Yeah. So, you know, I think that our mayor is doing a much better job. But certainly, there's a lot of room for improvement. So the example that I gave in my first article, Oahu's public spaces are becoming embarrassing. I talked about how when I was a young boy, during Operation Desert Shield, which was the ramp up for the war in Iraq, my father was assigned to Anderson Air Force Base Guam, as the commander of the 633rd Medical Group. And so pretty much every single person who was assigned there at that time was part of the war effort. So we had a brand new command from top to bottom. And one of the things that I observed, and this was a great leadership moment for me in terms of, you know, being a boy and part of growing up, is I noticed that not only the base commander, but all of the commanders that were assigned to that base, as well as my father, when they took command, the first thing that they did was they went around with a pen and a pad, and they brought all their staff with them, and they toured the base, they toured their command, and they said, okay, this is out of place. Do something about it. And I kid you not, the base commander at that time, he was a guy by the name of Colonel DiGiovanni, he was so fanatical that he would drive around the base in his official cars, limousine. And if he saw grass growing in the cracks, he would write it down and he'd tell the civil engineers, why is there grass growing in the cracks? And so it was just that minute attention to detail. And the reason for that was not just to micromanage people or to browbeat people, but if you make it a habit of engaging in what the military calls attention to detail, it's something that builds character. So someone who is able to pay attention to something as minute as grass growing in the sidewalk or cracks growing in the sidewalk or a building looking shabby or whatever, someone who is able to pay attention to a small thing, if they're given a big responsibility, like for example, handling war evacuees or even making it more relevant for Oahu, somebody who pays attention to cutting the grass, who has attention to detail to that, imagine how much attention to detail they'd show for a bigger effort like COVID-19. And so it's all about building a habit of excellence. And that was what I learned as a boy. That's something that I had the chance to observe for first person. And I think it's something that the people of Hawaii have not seen for a while, but need to see again, because we just deserve better. I mean, we pay so much in taxes, and you know, Hawaii has such a great people. We are a very proud, noble and honorable people, and we deserve to look like it and to feel it. And we just, darn it, we just deserve better. Yeah, okay. Well, that's a great background, and it's a great story. And so query, you know, how far off base are we now? It seems to me just my observation is we're a long way from that. There's a lot of, may I say, grass growing in the cracks here. And there's nobody looking forward watching it or asking others to fix it. So where are we now? And how do we, how do we get to a place that's better? Well, you know, a lot of people say things like, Oh, we just don't have the money to do this or, you know, we don't have the staff to do that. But, you know, initiative does not cost anything at all. So if I were, for example, Governor E. Gay, the first thing that I would do, if I saw, you know, I mean, and if you, I drive H1 every single morning and every single afternoon, and that place just looks absolutely shoddy. If I were Governor E. Gay, the first thing that I would do is I would say, All right, you know what, everybody, we're going to do an organizational day tomorrow. So everybody needs to, you know, get rags on or whatever, bring some gloves. And, you know, we're going to pick up the trash that's along this particular route of H1. Now, it may just be a very small kind of a thing, but that type of attitude immediately gets results. So if you can't pay for it, then you need to do something because saying that the status quo is all that we can expect. And I mentioned that in the article, saying that the status quo is just the best that we can get is unacceptable. People need to do something. So first and foremost, you start with initiative. The second thing is you need to prioritize it. The problem is we have this attitude in Hawaii where, you know, our government wants to do the absolute bare minimum. And so they say, you don't need this. You don't need that. So when they're, when they're building the roads, for example, they say, Oh, you know, who will possibly need, you know, more than, you know, two lanes. And then what happens is, is that, you know, the money that should be going to building the roads gets diverted elsewhere. So then when there's finally like on, you know, on a highway, locals screaming, you know, why is it always the Hawaiians? Why is it this? Move your stuff. You know, the locals don't understand, Hey, what the heck happened here? So they're reacting to something that was basically a failure to take decisive action, you know, years ago. So we have to prioritize that we need to spend the money that we have to actually clean these places up to recapitalize, to renovate, to build new infrastructure. And we need to focus on that. So rather than having this attitude where we say, you know, you don't need that, we need to build for capacity. Because if, if we're going to be saying, All right, you know, the world is welcome to come to Hawaii, Hawaii is the safest place on earth. And you've got 10.3 million people per year coming to Hawaii, wearing down the roads, you know, making a huge environmental impact and cultural impact. And we're not actually building capacity or renovating or keeping up with repairs. You're just going to have a place that looks like, you know, forgive me, the third world. So, you know, you look at places like, you know, the city of Dubai. I think Dubai during COVID had like a budget for its city, like, you know, $15 billion, $15.3 billion or something like that. I need to check, right? But think about like how much the state of Hawaii spends with all the money that we spend, Hawaii should look like Dubai or better. I mean, but instead, this place looks like Mogadishu. I mean, it's ridiculous. So, you know, and I mean no offense to people in Mogadishu. I'm sure they're great people. But the point that I'm making is, is that you go to any other place in the world, you know, that is industrialized and developed and people take pride in the public spaces. They make it a point to build quality infrastructure. And so we have to do that. So it, we need to do more than just saying, Oh, okay, we're going to give these grants and aids. We're going to give these subsidies. We're going to throw, you know, a million dollars here, two million dollars there, and we're not actually doing results. We're just actually paying people's salaries or whatever. You know, I mean, that's ridiculous. I mean, you know, it, you look at like, for example, the Philippines, right? The Philippines has like billions of dollars. We give them billions of dollars in aid, but that doesn't actually translate into like development. And Oahu is becoming the same way. We're always spending so much money, but it sure as hell doesn't look like that money is going anywhere, except of course, maybe the pockets of a couple of people. So we've got to make it a priority. We've got to make sure that money gets us results. Price is what you pay, but value is what you get. And we are not getting our value out of our tax dollars. And so that's, that's one of the things that I would work aggressively on if I were the governor. This is just a governor that let me say that, you know, you talk about priorities and you say that people have no expectations beyond some sort of rundown state of affairs. It's the people. They ought to be, you know, out there with pitchforks. They ought to be banging at the gates and say, what's wrong with you guys? We elected you. We gave you all this tax money. What are you doing? And people don't do that. They have sort of given up on their expectations. And I agree with you. Furthermore, you have a legislature and a city council and maybe, you know, maybe the city government. I like Rick Blanchi already also, but the city has limited responsibilities. There's police, fire, infrastructure, they get water and water. That's it. It's not complicated. All you have to do is fix things and that walk around looking for grass in the crack. That is a city job. And that's not happening. This place ought to be beautiful. It's a tourist destination. You said that. So, you know, I don't, but I don't limit it to the elected official at the top, or he or she could probably do a really good job. If focused on this, it's the city council, it's the state legislature, it's all those, you know, governmental agencies that are somehow, at least directly responsible. And it's the people who ought to make a stink about this sort of thing. How do you change public opinion? And may I say governmental ethic and governmental opinion to make people aware of this issue and take action on it? It's tough, you know, because, you know, when I came here to Hawaii, you know, one of the things that I noticed with a lot of my friends and my family who lived here is that, you know, as you alluded to, they're very apathetic towards civic engagement and, more importantly, voting. And so, you know, I spent about 13 years growing up in San Antonio, Texas. And, you know, the neighborhood that I lived there was like a, you know, a very, very well-kempt place. We had a very small, you know, government over there, but yet, you know, we didn't see, you know, the Walmart shopping carts all over the place. You know, we didn't see, you know, medical waste and, you know, hyperdermic needles all over the sidewalks. And the reason for that was, you know, over and above having elected officials that cared about that, the people who lived in that neighborhood simply would not tolerate that. So, if they walked past a hyperdermic needle or whatever, you know, somebody would put that up and put it in the trash, you know, or if there was a neighbor, you know, we had one particular guy in our street who just, you know, his house and his yard ended up looking like a crack house. And people, you know, put, I hate to use this term, but they basically put peer pressure on him and said, you know, hey, Buster, you got to, you know, cut your grass and fertilize it. And so, you know, eventually he did, but what happened was is that everybody was engaged in the outcome. So what happened is you have this continuity of expectations of excellence. Here in Hawaii, there's a lot of structural problems. Number one, the economy is so bad. So people have to work multiple jobs. So people who work multiple jobs have the tendency to just fixate so much on getting through the day that by the time that they get home, they just want to sleep. They don't want to pay attention to anything. They don't even want to watch the news. You know, they just want to watch, you know, their favorite TV show, you know, maybe have a beer and then, you know, eat dinner and then go to sleep. And it's wash, rinse, repeat over and over and over again. And that's bad because bad government thrives on public apathy. And so what happens is, you know, you've got this mindset where everybody just focuses on their narrow silo and nothing changes. And, you know, yes, absolutely, there's no substitute for public initiative because I guarantee you, you know, if the public was incensed about something and they, you know, made it a point to do something about it, people would be ashamed to be leaving, you know, rotting shopping carts in the middle of Kalihi Stream. They'd be ashamed to have, you know, a playground that's a state park or a city park that has grass so high that, you know, parents don't want to let their kids go in there because, you know, they might get stepping on like a broken glass bottle or whatever. And so, you know, it's unacceptable. But, you know, the people, I have sympathy for them because it's hard, but, you know, it's no excuse. You basically, you know, if you're someone who, you know, say that you work, you know, long hours at Alamoana shopping center and you come back to Waipahu in your drain, you need to get involved in politics because you're drained. You need to, you know, demand better from your elected officials so that you're not always falling behind. But, you know, there's no standard for that. And I think probably for this generation, because the economy has been so bad, people have just been locked into a survival mode, so they're not used to being in a position where they have the free time to lobby for these things to get engaged for it, or to even do it, you know. I remember, you know, briefly in my 20s, I worked at Alamoana Macy's, and I remember when I got home, man, I was just so tired, my feet hurt so much. I just wanted to sleep, and that was it. But, you know, what can you say, right? I mean, you're tired, you're worn out, but you still got to think about the future. So, but I absolutely agree with you. It starts with the people too. So let me ask you this question. Do you think it has to get worse before it will get better? You know, I think that people recognize how bad things are, the fact that, you know, whenever I do these articles, there's like 120 comments, you know, people saying, you know, this place sucks. And, you know, I don't comment often, you know, because, you know, I don't want to be seen as arguing with people or favoring any particular group. But, you know, I think to myself, it's like, okay, well, you know, if you think that things are bad, why don't you do something about it? You know, why is it that, you know, you think that Oahu sucks, but then you keep voting for, you know, the same types of people, or you reward them with higher office, and greater opportunity for incompetence. You know, I honestly think that we're probably at a very dangerous inflection point here where, you know, people might just give up and say, you know, I'm overloaded with the pandemic. I'm overloaded with the cost of gas. I'm overloaded with, you know, having to, you know, raise kids with skyrocketing food prices. And they might just disengage. And that's my fear, because you look at places like the Philippines, you know, which just have massive, you know, shantytowns or whatever. And, you know, you have this trend towards, I'll just make up a word. I hate the way that this sounds, but, you know, gentrification of, you know, of pristine countries and that seems to be the trend. So my fear is, is that it won't improve simply because, you know, people don't show up to vote, people don't get engaged in their community, but maybe we'll get lucky and, you know, maybe we'll elect a couple of people or get some administrators in various departments who, for lack of a better word, are hardasses who are fanatics for attention to detail. But, you know, all we can do in the meantime is just do our best and pray. And the area of responsibility that's given to us, whatever we do, you know, do good with that. You know, if you walk past trash, don't just walk past it, pick it up, throw it in the trash. I know that that's controversial for some, but, you know, if you show leadership by example, it can make a big difference. And that's symbolic. You know, it's a guy named Kimmelman. Kimmelman is the architectural critic for the New York Times. And I think he teaches at Yale as well. And Kimmelman's thing, as to an extent your thing, is public spaces. He talks about public spaces in classical days of, you know, the Greek and Roman empires and all that. And he talks about the connection between public spaces and that social engagement you were talking about, which is not only government, but it's quality of life. And it's this thing about getting together and demanding a better quality of civic life, you know, a higher priority for the way the city, the community, in Greece, they call it the poly BOLI, not the poly highway. Anyway, you know, Kimmelman is right, I think, and you wrote about it. And it's all about encouraging people to participate and adopt and invest in public spaces, because that's symbolic also. So, you know, it seems to me that if you have public spaces that are worthy public spaces, you know, parks, open air, places where people can gather and speak to each other, you know, you allowed that kind of civic engagement. And you avoid the, I'm home now, I'm going to watch Escape TV, I'm not going to talk to anybody, you know, I'm not going to take calls or that. And so, you know, to me, that might be something that you can do that I can do to encourage people, encourage government to focus first on public spaces. What do you think about that? No, absolutely. And I am just absolutely dumbfounded why, you know, a state whose primary source of revenue is tourism, you know, doesn't focus on that. I mean, certainly they, you know, allow Waikiki or Coalina to look nice, but, you know, that's not the only places that tourists visit. And so, you know, having that ability to, you know, and the technical term for this is built environment, having quality, built environment, having aesthetics, and proper function in these areas, that's the core function of government. So, you know, when I see, you know, elected officials saying, oh, you know, we're going to meet X goals on, you know, carbon emissions, you know, and we're going to, you know, save the environment and we're going to, you know, prevent this and prevent that. And I'm like, you can't even prevent trash from getting, you know, in the public parks, how are you going to, you know, reduce carbon emissions when you're not even, you know, reducing the urine emissions that are left on the floor of the park bathroom. So, yeah, I mean, and I worked at the legislature, you know, there's a lot of sharp people in there, but unfortunately, you know, what, what usually ends up, you know, prevailing is just stuff that, you know, shoots money over to, you know, special interests and, you know, it's just about, you know, getting constantly reelected. So you target low hanging fruit issues that are, you know, visual rather than vital. And, you know, you're always focused on staying in office or moving to the higher office, and you're not actually leaving something for the next generation. You look at Singapore, you know, Singapore, after World War II, you know, was not all that great. But the thing that they decided at that time was, you know, we're going to build this place to be a world class city. And in a very short amount of time, they became a major hub. And, and, you know, that was no small part to putting the initial investment into infrastructure. Here, what people do is they say, oh, you know, we don't need it. And they make up an excuse. So they say, well, why don't you cut the grass? Oh, well, you know, because the rewilding helps nature. Why don't you, you know, build, you know, new buildings, you know, for the government, they're like loaded with asbestos. Oh, well, you know, we've determined that our, our best practices say that, you know, this is contained. And so there's always some stupid excuse not to engage in, in quality and excellence. And we need to stop that because here people are just so mercenary. There are elected officials are just concerned about, you know, how can this make me look good and who can get payouts from this that will then favor me later. And that's the totally wrong approach. If you really want to get, you know, true prestige, if you want to get, you know, true excellence, you've got to make the world around you a better place. I think it was, you know, Cicero, who said that among the noblest of genius, there is a insatiable desire for power, command and glory. Right. And so, you know, being noble is about making things better. It's about empowering others, because when you empower others, you empower yourself. And so, you know, maybe we just need to have a paradigm shift and not just a personality shift in our next election. Certainly in 2022, you know, I'm going to be haranguing a lot of people with my articles that, you know, you guys need to not just, you know, knee jerk vote, but you need to vote for a better future. You know, and it's bad because if you read my articles, I'm always talking about, you know, fix Hawaii, right. But we shouldn't be talking about just fixing Hawaii. We need to move past fixing, you know, to getting, you know, into the stratosphere. We need to be a leader in the Pacific, not lagging behind. And so, you know, I might be a very type A personality, others might not, but you know, if other people like me, you know, get together, unite and we put our voices together, certainly we can make a difference. And maybe we can just even throw this election or whatever. So it's possible. Yeah, I mean, theoretically, somebody could come along and say, look, I'm going to focus on this stuff. That's what I'm going to do. And if you, if you believe it, you know, if you think my idea is a good idea about focusing on this, then vote for me. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen, but to me, I would vote for something like that in a nanosecond. I want that because that's clarity and it's leadership. By the way, just a thought that sometimes soon, I would like to have another show with you on Kakaako, which is the very embodiment of these issues has been and is now today. But here's my area. I want to ask you about last and that is this. It's the ghost of Christmas future out of Charles Dickens and the Christmas Carol. And he causes a crotchet. No, not crotchet, but the old man who was so greedy and everything to look into the future with him. And the future is bleak. And so I would like to ask you about the ghost of Christmas future. If we do nothing, if we continue this upside down priorities, if we can, you know, continue to simply try to stay in office, simply try to raise money, simply try to satisfy, you know, the special interests that knock on our door. And we ignore these important issues about quality of life, quality of community, quality of the future for our kids. What happens to us in the ghost of Christmas future? Well, you know, as a political scientist, when we look at the future, we study the past to look for trends. And what we have seen so far in Hawaii is that there's been an exodus of people to the mainland who are just simply tired of things here. I used to joke and say that, you know, Hawaii's greatest export is talented young people. And, you know, I think that if things continue as they are, young people who are graduating from high school or graduating from college, you know, they're going to say, hey, you know, where's this great future that I was promised, you know, when I was growing up, everybody told me, you know, that we're going to, you know, build this great future. But, you know, I'm just surrounded by trash and by economic problems and by crime. And I think people are just going to say that the opportunity cost to fix things is just too much. And then they're just going to leave. And then that's bad because then the very people who would be predisposed to fix things are the ones that are now adding their talents to the mainland. And so my fear is that worst case scenario is that, you know, Hawaii is just basically going to look like, you know, parts of Southeast Asia or, you know, other parts of the world which are just impoverished. But, you know, the politicians are well compensated. You know, there's always some white elephant project that's never completed, because it's not meant to be completed. It's just meant to, you know, hire a couple of people or, you know, sustain a particular contractor. And so you'll have promises of great projects surrounded by massive sprawling slums. And, you know, that's a future that we don't want because Hawaii is a beautiful place. The most beautiful thing about Hawaii is our natural environment. And so we need to make it look beautiful. We need to avoid that future. So that's my prayer. Fair enough. Fair enough. And implicit in that is that if these young people go away, that's, those are the people who could, I don't want to use the term fix. We're not going to use that term anymore. We could remake, reimagine our society. Those are the ones who would reimagine it and pay for it by creating, you know, economic activity and becoming an economic base. And if they leave, we're less likely to be able to deal with this. So it's a spiral down, in my view. And therefore, every single way you say the most important asset is the environment. Well, the people too. Yes. And the people can preserve the environment. And if we can get them to stick around and adopt the notions that you are advancing today, then that will raise all boats. And that will, you know, create the kind of community that we want to see. I hope you keep on writing about this, Danny. I sure will. And I think that, you know, over time, maybe, you know, they used to say in ancient Rome to refer to ancient Rome yet again. Repetitio mate studio, which means repetition is the mother of study. And the more you say it, the more likely somebody will be listening. And so I hope you do that. And I hope there's other columnists and journalists who take the same position so that we can make an impression of people before they take off. Very important thoughts. And I really appreciate this discussion with you, Danny. No, thank you so much, Shane. Until next time, then. Danny de Gracia of Civil Beat, a columnist who, and next time, by the way, you can tell us how you really feel. Thank you very much.