Honolulu Lite
In a potentially staggering blow to the entire "Work at Home" and "Lose Weight Now" industry, the Honolulu City Council is moving to crack down on one of the most serious problems affecting our city: The posting of flyers and posters on telephone poles and street light fixtures. City Council pole-vaults
into new litter controversyThis vertically inclined litter is a blight imposed on the community by outlaws purporting to be garage bands, people who have lost pets and small businesses using public, taxpayer-financed telephone poles to spread their insidious propaganda about miracle hair-growth products.
The telephone-pole underground flaunts its lawlessness to the extent of even posting their own PHONE NUMBERS and ADDRESSES on their offensive tailings.
I wouldn't be surprised if these were the same scofflaws who drive 39 miles per hour in 35 mph zones, brazenly increasing the chance of causing a deadly traffic accident by, well, 4 miles per hour.
These are new days in Hawaii. We are reclaiming our roadways and telephone poles from marauding gangs of Kalihi housewives and weekend rock bands and anyone else who thinks the First Amendment gives them the right to desecrate rare, indigenous, tar-soaked telephone poles with their capitalistic filth.
Thank goodness the City Council is boldly going after these baby billboard bandits. A bill is moving through the Council to put teeth in a gummy litter law that currently prohibits posting signs and posters on public property such as telephone poles, light fixtures and, I suspect, Rene Mansho.
WE ARE LUCKY to be represented by a tough law-and-order Council whose members will brook absolutely no legal or ethical shenanigans unless they pertain to running an illegal wedding business out of a councilman's home, fleeing the scene of a motor vehicle accident and then lying about it to police, violating state campaign spending laws, demanding kickbacks from city employees, lying about one's college education and bankrolling personal vacations with city funds.
Yet, this is a sensitive Council. Sensitive to the fact that if members anger too many of their constituents with zero-tolerance enforcement of manini violations, they won't get re-elected. To that end, in its campaign to denude telephone poles of their gaudy paper appendages, the Council is taking the unprecedented step of passing a law it hopes will not be enforced equally among all offenders.
The bill's sponsors, Duke Bainum and Steve Holmes, have come right out and said they don't want the law enforced against people who post directions to birthday parties or flyers announcing yard sales on telephone poles. (Presumably, that goes for people posting "Vote for Me" campaign posters, too.)
Everyone knows that a flier stapled to a telephone pole announcing a rock concert is much more offensive to the eye than a flier announcing a garage sale that just happens to take place every week. The cops are going to have a blast figuring out which outlaws to bust. Pity the poor housewife who forgets to take down her "Fifi the Lost Parrot" reward poster soon enough to suit Messrs. Bainum and Holmes.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite