 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. Aloha, and welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee. Every once in a while, I'd like to take a pause and discuss with my colleague, Jay Fidel here, who is a regular also on Think Tech Hawaii, and we get a chance to sort of go off and talk about politics in Hawaii and the world and the like. And the recent visit by our famous president, 45, or the 45th president, I call him 45. Is that what they do? OK, well, in a recent visit by 45 to Hawaii allows us to take advantage of the usual programming and get in here and just talk about whatever pops up about politics, politicians and Trump, I guess, you know. So anyway, the 45th president visited the United States, and it was so interesting because one of the security guards downstairs thought that was the greatest thing since Kennedy. And but most people in my neighborhood were commenting about, oh, man, wasn't it terrific that all these protesters were out? So, you know, there's obviously he's a very polarizing figure. What are your feelings? Well, lots of feelings. I didn't I didn't want him here. I don't need him here. I don't think any of us needed him here. He's not he's not going to do anything for us or the country. But I remembered back in 19 really 70s, I guess, late 60s, late 60s. My wife and I lived on Governor's Island in New York Harbor. Oh, and it was you had to get there with a little ferry. Five minutes, very familiar with the place. Yeah. And it was accessible from the East Side Drive, FDR, I think they called it, and the West Side Drive, all coming together at the battery of Manhattan. Right. And near near the battery, just really a hundred yards away was the heliport. Yeah, that's right. Right on Wall Street there. And Nixon, Republican also, he loved to come in on that heliport and fly in and when he did, you know, they did the security number, right? Yeah, they stopped the traffic for miles around. The whole lower Manhattan was jammed up every single time. We couldn't get back to Governor's Island. The ferry wasn't working because security, security. I thought to myself, you know, Jesus is basically inconsiderate. Nobody liked Nixon. I mean, really, if he was in my world, nobody liked him. And and I thought of that. I thought of that when Trump decided that he was going to stay in Waikiki. Well, by the way, when did he stay when he came down to it? Did not stay at the Trump Tower. They ate there. They ate at their Trump Tower. But he seems to have a way of always promoting his brand, no matter where in the world he goes. He was going to be subject to criticism if he did that. So he didn't do it. He stated it. I forget the name of a very fancy hotel down there. Like the Holly Kalani or something. No, it wasn't the Holly Kalani. It was a national chain, but I forget what. Oh, OK. And, you know, I'm sure you had a. Well, we would we would mention the name if you would make a contribution to tech Hawaii, tech, tech, tech, tech Hawaii, we would, we would. I will find out. OK, I'm sorry. Well, anytime. Hey, on the number 808-374-2014. Make a contribution and I promise you it'll be on the air. And we're having a fun drive right now. That's exactly thanks for think tech. Anyway, so name will come to me, but he stayed there instead. I'm sure he had a huge luxury and everything and family probably loved it. And well, my wife was commenting because she was watching and seeing when he when he landed in Japan, one of the first things he did was he talked to every service man that they could bring into the audience, you know. And she said to me, she said, his people have a way of generating these huge events or at least looking like these huge events. And and I thought that's true. I mean, Trump loves this. He gets rejuvenated by it's almost like Bonito Mussolini. You know, I mean, these kind of characters in my mind. I give him unconditional love. Yeah, he they like to stand in front of thousands of people. Dictator of North Korea, Kim Jong-un. Yeah, Kim Jong-un, he's just, you know, he brings out all his military. And I said, is this an image that you, you know, I worry about his relationship with the military. He wants to spend trillions, many trillions doing more nuclear weapons, weapons stockpile. And, you know, John, my own impression is one of his big agenda points in going to Asia is to encourage them to arm up against North Korea. And that's that's his alliance with with Abbey. Abbey has been spending, you know, the last, what, five years or so trying to amend the Japanese Constitution to allow that to happen. And actually, Abbey's not the first to suggest that, nor is Trump the first United States president to suggest that the Japanese need to pick up more of the military burden for the defense of Asia. But the way he does it, it almost resembles, as I said, some of these, you know, little dictators, dictators. That's what it sounds like, really. He'd like every all he'd be surrounded with uniforms and spend a lot of money. I mean, in the amount of money he's spending in military now, it's more than it was before and what he's doing, which we don't hear all about, is a lot more than Obama was doing. Well, some of the things that that you need to that we have to be concerned about is, first of all, as you expand the military, who gets the military contracts? Who business big business, but big business who may be connected? Number one, because the Trumps have a way of being connected to all of this. And the second thing is the cost of that buildup is probably as he stands in front of the soldier and says, I'm going to bring you new equipment and all of this, the cost of that, of whatever he's promising is probably something that affects that the that's being taken away like health care from the middle of the service man's family. I don't see that, though. They don't get there. There is that connection, you know? Well, I mean, this whole idea of holding the entire health care system, holding it ransom is, you know, I think just it's sinful. And nobody we seem to have forgotten about it because he's let us down about 15 rabbit holes since he announced that he was going to withhold Medicare. Yeah, you know, it strikes me that this it's an implicit expectation. We expect the president to abide by and execute the laws. He's the executive. But there are a lot of laws that he is not only ignoring, he's pulling the wings out of existing statues. Exactly. He's not he's not honoring. He's not he's not abiding by the laws of this country. How can you knock how you knock down Obamacare by pulling the wings out of it when it is the law? He has been unable to change it. But he's just it is the law. And it's it's also the only thing out there that are keeping many people alive. And yet we're going to play poker with it. We're going to treat it like this is some real estate negotiation. And I'm going to leverage you with whatever I by holding off funds or these kinds of things. But unlike that situation, we got millions of people whose lives are on the line, you know, and he's setting it up. So it's going to get worse. I mean, this tax cut is going to result in less collections for the federal government. They won't have as much money. So what what what is he going to do? He's not going to have the money to do health care. And he's going to be like like Lyndon Johnson found out you can't have guns and butter at the same time. True. And so we're either going to build a great society. We're going to build an army like the North Koreans have done. He's dismantling our society, John. It's it's it's really quite sad. Now, what's interesting, though, as we were talking about earlier is that he did reach out to the Democrats in Hawaii. I mean, he had a conversation with the mayor and with the governor, who obviously talked about the mass transit system, which is something that I don't, you know, so he does these things, which other politicians, you know, it seems like everything focuses around him. In fact, they were asked. They were reporters asked him on his because of his trip to Asia right now. You know, you've got all kinds of unfilled positions in your administration, particularly the State Department. And yet you're taking this trip without any support, without any any basics. What he said was something along the lines like, well, I'm the only one that counts. None of those positions mean anything. I'm the one that counts. So what I say is foreign policy. I and in a way, he's absolutely, you know, correct. He's dismantling the State Department. I wonder why Rex Tillerson stays around. He's you know, he's losing his edge, his authority, his options all the time. He's having the rug pulled out from under him on a regular basis. You know, it's it's it's amazing how the one thing to his credit is that Trump has appointed some people who are, you know, knowledgeable and really, you know, and committed to this country. But the way he the way he treats him is it's amazing. I couldn't work with somebody like that. I just Well, anyway, he came to a why he met with our politicians. He snarled the traffic for a couple days. I was I stayed in my house. A lot of people, they close the schools and a lot of businesses and government offices were closed because of this. And I say, you see, it's the height of in consideration. Did you there were comments? People have been commenting about the number of people who were out protesting the visit. Were you aware of any of that? I know there was a protest at the Capitol. Yeah, there was in the hundreds, maybe it wasn't. What about the one on the street the next day? Was it anything? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's these protests, you want them in a way, you want them to be more. But they're not that great. There's nothing you get tired. People get tired of protesting. Remember what happened right after he was he was inaugurated, you know, not my president and thousands of people went to Washington. Sure. Sure. You can't do that all the time. You can't do that for four years, you know, so you better get. But what's, you know, and the left or the progressives in our society, in a way, have been very successful with direct action. I mean, whether you go back to the the labor movement or the suffrage, suffrage for women's right to vote. And then the labor movement, the all the all time civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, and yet when I when I saw these protests seemed to me like, in a way, there was so 20th century. You know, what was interesting to me after with regard to Trump, which I which I thought was he goes to Europe and he pulls us out of the Paris agreement, right? And California says, not for me, I'm in it. And Arizona says the same thing, you know, or I don't know if Arizona, but who else, others, others as well, other cities. And I'm thinking that is 20th first century. If you're going to deal with Trump, then then we need to deal with him effectively. Yeah, that's like Douglas Shinn, isn't it? Yeah, he's doing it. Absolutely. Take state action. Take state action. Say, no, not for me. You know, start exercise. And that leads us to local politics. Yeah, and that's where we want to go. Because, you know, after a certain amount of time, Trump gets to be monotonous. He does. No, for real. You know, we've seen it, we've done it. Well, we'll be right back with a discussion of what's happening in Hawaii, politics-wise. This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. This is Stink Tech, Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha, I'm Richard Concepcion, the Hispanic Hawaii host. Tinte is important to me because it provides me the opportunity to express my freedom of speech and also empower me to exchange ideas and views within our community. For the first time, Tinte Hawaii is participating in online web-based fundraise campaign to raise $40,000. Give thanks to Tinte. We run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so that Tinte Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civil engagement through free programming like mine. I have already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax deductible contribution by going to this website. W-W-W, thanks for TinteCalsBox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by Tinte Hawaii's 30 plus weekly shows, thank you. Gracias for your generosity. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Waihe. If you've got a question that you like to throw into the mix, call us at 808-374-2014. And my guest this afternoon, not really my guest, my co-host this afternoon, and a political expert is Jay Fidel, the president and founder of one of the founders at least, or maybe the founder of Tintec Hawaii. There were originally four of us. There were, well, someday we need to get into that. Yeah, we should. Well, maybe we should real quickly. Tell me who else. Oh, OK, we formed the organization in the year 2000. There were four of us. It was Lori Akao, a real estate person. It was Don Mangirelli, a tech person. It was Gordon Bruce, who's still with us in the show, and it was me. And we ultimately found our way to HPR and had a radio show there until 2008. Well, I have a feeling that one of the reasons why you founded all of this was so that we can have the kind of conversations we have. Exactly right, which is to talk about current affairs in Hawaii and the nation. So what's happening in Hawaii right now is that every politician that I know seems to want to run for another office. Yes, and I like to sort of just take a footnote on that. We're going to have, I don't want to say circus, but we're going to have a lot of people running for a lot of offices. It's going to be an active political year guarantee. Is it a good thing? Well, it's a good thing for people like us and it'll be a good thing for this show because obviously I intend to do as much as I can to have a bunch of them up here. Yeah, maybe together even and talking about the issues that face our state. Yeah, I'm not so sure it's a good thing for the state of Hawaii. I'm not so sure. And the reason why I'm not so sure is that, unfortunately, when you have this kind of an exciting year, a lot of talent may get left, you know, on the outside. People have to resign their offices to run for the other office. Or two good people running against each other. One of them has to lose. Right, you know, and I've said this publicly, so I'll say it again, you know, Congresswoman Honobusa, for example, I think she's outstanding in Congress. And when she comes back, not only are we going to lose a good Congresswoman, one way or the other, if she wins the governorship or she doesn't, you know, that that spot is going to be filled by somebody new, somebody who is, you know, in a way untested, doing no seniority at all. Right, doing a very important time. Hopefully, no, we don't seem to be able to do it. And in some sense, it's very frustrating. But the Democrats don't seem to be able to win, even with Trump practically handing them a match. I don't understand that at all. Oh, yeah, I don't either. And it's it's frustrating. But if things go the way I'm sure God intends it to, we the Democrats should win a few seats, maybe even create a majority. Yeah. And if that ever happened, we would want our best and senior people on the front line. Good point. You know, in on the congressional delegation. Yeah. The other thing is, again, you know, heaven forbid. But Senator Hirono has her own health problems in the paper this morning. You know, and I love Maisie. I've known her for as long as she she has been in politics. And I will, you know, continue to support her. But if anything goes the way we hope it doesn't, that's another another loss, another loss. So you have all of these people that are, you know, looking for. I guess advancement and you don't blame them. After all, this is our system. But, you know, it may be a funnier initially. But in the long run, I'm a little worried about what the consequence is. Yeah. And I think in our time of polarization and fragmentation, we have the same malaise as the mainland does, maybe in lesser degree. We can't reach conclusions. I tell you one thing, I think one thing. And I'm saying this in all due respect and kindness. OK, I think our government. Now, when I say governments, I mean the county and the state governments here in the state in Hawaii are far too dominated by lawyers. No, absolutely. You're a lawyer. Oh, yeah. And that's the response every time I say that. But you're a lawyer. Jay, you're a lawyer. Oh, we're all lawyers. You know, the one thing that as a lawyer, I know, is that the person making policy should not be wearing a lawyer's hat. He should be wearing a policy hat. Once that is done, then the lawyers come in because the lawyer's job is to assess risk and say no and say no, which means that if you if you which is why, by the way, when I and I had one of the best attorney generals in the state and he knew in the history of Hawaii, frankly. And he knew he knew he understood what I just said. Who was this was Warren Price? Yes. OK, so he understood that there was policy and there was the lawyer. There was the client and there was the lawyer. The trouble with government lawyers is they tend to think of themselves as judges. OK, they think of themselves as judges. So the attorney general, the court council, writes an opinion and believes that's the law. Yeah. And all it is is one side of the argument. It doesn't really. So the real issue whenever you get whenever you do anything is how do I serve the public best and if the lawyer, if you if you say there's this. So all I want to know is not yes or no, whether I can or cannot as a decision maker, I want to know the quantum of risk involved, how likely it is for something to happen, not that it can happen and you can get sued because every government lawyer will tell you immediately you're going to get sued. Somebody will if you make a public park and you open it up and it has sidewalks, somebody is going to fall down and you're going to get sued. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't open the park. It's that kind of thinking that led to the closing of Kakaako. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. You see, we didn't solve the real problem, which is what do you do with homeless people? So now we in and so what? At one point, some lawyer, I'm willing to bet, I wasn't in the room, walks into the room and says, you know what? This is risky. You're going to get sued. So we closed down the whole park. And I just drove through there and it's, you know, not only do you close down the park, but to show that you're being productive. What do you do? You take property all around the park and you lease it out for cars to park. So one of my favorite all time projects, which was Kakaako Waterfront Park. Sure. You know, I can tell you where that all began. I'll tell you where it all began. Marilyn Barnhorse, who had just lost the the raceful mayor against Frank Fosse, called me up when I was the tenet governor and said, John, can I take you out for a picnic? And we went out and we sat in this garbage dump in the front of Honolulu. She said, she said, this could be a park. And I said, you know what, Marion? Marilyn, fantastic. And then I went back and I said, we're going to read, develop Kakao. And Senator Russell Blair said, this got to be a park. And so we built the park. And now we have a children's museum in this park. We are beautiful. But because we didn't come up with a solution for one problem, we create a second problem. And that second problem we're creating right now is we're closing off the waterfront because of somebody's risk assessment to people in Hawaii. So I mean, you got me on my sandbox. OK, it's OK not to do it. But, you know, the problem is that we are running out of public spaces. I'm into public spaces. Parks are so critical for our our our existence as a community and individually. We don't have enough parks. Everybody talks about the beauty of Hawaii, but it's not available to most people. It's too hard to get to our people to our people. Yeah, it's available to tourists. Yeah, you know, you got some of the best. Go go to the Royal I mean the Sheridan Hotel. Yeah, you got to talk about being the beaches being available. It's right out front. Yeah, yeah, but we're, you know, where our people need to go or be is what's getting closed off. It's like, you know, it was like the other day. And again, and this is I'm being critical, but I'm also doing this with a great deal of respect, but it's like saying in the Hawaiian Homes hearing that my job is to build homes so I can spend thirty three million dollars to build rentals, you know, and which is there's a whole backstory to this. And we just ran out of almost running out of time. But it was amazing to me that money would be sitting around when they are so native, so many native Hawaiians who are never in their own man. Yes, you can't huge percentage of the homeless native Hawaiians. Yeah, you can't. That wasn't existing in the past. In the past, somehow they were absorbed into our communities. No, what? And and so this is, you know, I think instead of trying to get promoted, more people need to concentrate on how we can make better what we know. Right, and not worry about this kind of risk assessment thing. Yeah, well, that's the problem. So we start off by closing, you know, go back to the full circle. Got to stop letting lawyers decide what is public policy you need. And I don't mean that as an occupation. Some of the best lawyers, some of the best policymakers I know are lawyers, but they got to start thinking like a policymaker and not like a pretend judge. Right. And for the benefit of the community, for the greater good. And stick with it, find that policy and stick with it. When I used to have to negotiate with some of the most radical groups in Hawaii, I always sent a normal one because she she had the one qualification I wanted. She could find a solution or at least where we needed to go because she wasn't tangled up in some legal mumbo-jumbo. We should come second. I'm not saying you should ignore it now. Don't get me wrong. The law is the law. But the assessment needs to be done and the purpose up front. And then we will do it. But anyway, that's some advice to some of my friends, if you're listening, Mary, if you're listening. And all those people running for office. And all those people running for office. Don't let the lawyers decide what's good for us. You should do it. Yeah. And when you run for office and when you win, think of policy. Think of policy that benefits us all and stick with it. What benefits Hawaii? Yeah. And thank you for putting up with us. I know we are short of time and I have enjoyed spending time with you. It's been fun. Thank you. Aloha and I'll see you in two weeks.