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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
There are lots
of ways to make
paradise more priceyWhat is it that they say about a prophet in his own town? He should leave everybody the hell alone? He should move to another town?
All I know is that a few years ago I suggested the state set up its own casino in Las Vegas called "Hawaii! Hawaii!" and take money from the rubes without having them actually come to the islands. It would be a great way to bring in much-needed revenue for the state without all the hassles of legalized gambling in Hawaii (i.e., organized crime, tacky buildings ... broke, derelict columnists roaming the streets looking for handouts).
Now Chicago's doing it. Sort of. The mayor wants to open a government-owned casino right in the middle of town, a sort of Black Hole of Taxation that will virtually suck cash out of Chicagoans' wallets before they can sneak home after work. Unlike Honolulu, it doesn't matter if Chicago puts a casino in the middle of the city because it invented organized crime, it's plenty tacky and its streets are already teeming with derelict columnists.
I also suggested that we sell sponsorships of certain government infrastructure and services to private businesses to make money. I envisioned the "Preparation H-3 Freeway" or "Preparation HPOWER" for examples. Now, other cities are jumping on the idea of private sponsorship of government property while our economy is still sinking.
The best our elected officials can come up with to bring in cash is boring old proposals to charge extra for garbage pickup, sell city-owned parking garages and raise bus fares. Here are new, bold ideas that I'm going to toss out, even though nobody in this town will pay attention to them:
>> Rent out advertising space on the mayor, governor, legislators and City Council members. If NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon can wear a jumpsuit covered with Kellogg's cereal and Quaker State motor oil patches, why can't City Council Budget Committee Chairwoman Ann Kobayashi sport ads for Zippy's? We could bring in thousands of dollars, especially on the larger elected officials, if we turn them into walking billboards. We just have to make sure the money goes to the people and not into their campaign bank accounts.
>> Charge a fee for speaking pidgin. Pidgin speaking is one of the great untaxed resources of Hawaii. The fee should be double for haoles speaking pidgin badly.
>> Visible Underwear Surcharge. This would serve the dual purpose of easing the tax burden on normal people and getting all these "cool" idiots around town to pull their pants up. Why it's fashionable for guys to walk around with their pants hanging by their knees, I don't know. Anyone who wants to show their dirty underwear in public should have to pay for it.
>> In the same vein, we should have a fee for anyone wearing more than three pounds of decorative metal in their face. I saw a young lady the other day who looked like she had stepped in front of a cannon blast of shrapnel.
>> If we are going to raise the price of riding inside buses, we should expand ridership by charging people to ride on top of buses, like they do in enlightened Third World countries. We could double bus fare income if we used all of the bus instead of just the comfy parts inside.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com