Honolulu Lite
Stick a turban on my head and call me Miss Cleo, but darn if we didn't predict the furious backpedaling by politicians once the speeding-camera program went from financial windfall to fiasco. We also predicted the public backlash, which didn't take a crystal ball, just an understanding of how offensive it is to use Mussolini-like tactics in the Land of Aloha to make the traffic run on time. Camera vans cause
drivers to ‘flip’ outWe wrote a few weeks ago: "There are still a few political dullards who haven't stuck their fingers in the wind yet. Your sneaky attempt to squeeze yet more money out of residents under the shibai of traffic safety has failed. You have succeeded in driving islanders into a righteous ... fit of road rage."
Not that I'm calling Sen. Cal Kawamoto a dullard, but as chairman of the Transportation Committee and one of the chief architects of this traffic turkey, he still feels the need to protect his baby. Even though more than 45 of the 76 legislators signed a petition to stop the camera traffic control program, Kawamoto still thinks he can brainwash the public into believing that the camera program was not established simply as a cash bonanza for the state and the private company that runs it. He said that, among other things, a "stronger, more effective public education and information" effort is needed to stop the complaints. Translation: The public has not been adequately brainwashed to meekly accept this outrageous intrusion on their way of life, and more propaganda needs to be heaped upon them.
On second thought, that does seem a bit dull. Not to mention insanely insulting. Cal, buddy, the people don't want it. They are revolting, in a good way.
I got a call from a nice, calm, mature woman asking me if it is against the law to "flip the bird" at the white traffic vans. When the state institutes an enforcement policy that causes civil people to consider committing uncivil, not to mention obscene, acts, then the state has gone too far.
Kawamoto didn't even want to have a legislative hearing on the widespread disgruntlement with the camera speeding program. But he capitulated after Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, one of the sharpest knives in the Senate drawer, smacked him around a little bit. That hearing will be at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the state Capitol, a time guaranteeing that very few working stiffs will be able to attend. Pity Kawamoto if he confuses low turnout with low interest on the issue. The people the camera speeding program affects the most are those who drive to and from work every day. And the reason they can't attend a post-lunchtime hearing is because they are working.
Denver has stopped its camera program, which uses the same private company, ACS Inc., after a judge ruled the program illegal because a private company, not the police, prepares the citations. That specific legal argument may not fly here. But there are plenty of other legal challenges and lots of lawyers ready to flog it out in court.
But before we get into a hairy legal battle, why don't politicians like Kawamoto simply listen to the people they were elected to represent? After all, they pay the bills.
By the way, "flipping the bird" at a camera van may not be polite, but I suspect it is legal and definitely therapeutic.
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Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
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