Still no road
It’s been a while since I wrote about Pohoiki Road, because it seemed like they were going to do something.
It would seem I was a little premature.
On Jan. 24, it will be a year since FEMA started there environmental assessment report. Robert Barker of FEMA told me that it would take maybe two or three months.
I contacted him when that time was running out, and he then told me that by law they had one year to complete the EA. No explanation as to why it was going to take the full year. But here we are.
So, I contacted Sherise (Kana‘e-Kane) at the county who said Bobby Command could answer my questions. Well, that’s nice, but after three emails back and forth, it would appear she has no clue.
Fine. Since FEMA and the county seem to have a relationship that neither one wants to end, I asked her to forget FEMA and just tell me why we don’t have a gravel road like Highway 137. The county put that in lickety-split. Well, guess what? No answer.
In February, it will be five years without a road, and nobody will tell me what is going on.
I can usually follow the money, but this time I don’t have a clue.
Ian McArthur
Pahoa
Perils of intangibility
It makes no difference what you call it, but intangibility will not support an economy.
After the iron and steel industry was too cheap to modernize and went overseas to where labor was supposed to be dirt cheap, the American economy took a nosedive.
Billy Joel wrote “Allentown” in response to this, but America went comatose, sang along and hit the snooze button.
Then someone decided we needed an information economy. While it’s nice to know something others don’t, they can always acquire it, one way or another.
Then came the service economy, which wasn’t any better than the information one. This was when the phrase “Would you like fries with that?” became popular with standup comics.
I remember economists proclaiming we had a strong economy at the same time a lot of men were standing on street corners holding signs saying “Will work for food.”
Government economists only look at the top of the economic food chain and generally don’t consider those at the bottom, and probably don’t even know they exist.
What we have now is largely a global weapons economy. Most people want peace, but war makes industry a lot more money. Read Gen. Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket!”
Now the latest intangibility is cryptocurrency, which some call a ponzi scheme, and I compare to unicorns.
When an electrical power grid fails, where would all of those little cryptos go? How could you spend them without all of the technology that creates them? You say that can’t happen? Go to Texas, and tell them a failed power grid is impossible!
Better yet, go to Ukraine and roll around on the ground at Chernobyl.
Slava Ukraini!
Dave Kisor
Pahoa