Howzit Howard

This is what he said -- the Obama inaugural address

The change agent stood before millions and linked his inaugural address to the dozens that have gone before him, especially our earliest presidents, who all focused their remarks on the wisdom of the U.S. Constitution. For Barack Obama, the way to put it was, "America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we the people have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbears and true to our founding documents." As I watched President Obama say that, I was reminded of former Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin's assertion that the European nations revere the architectural reminders of their storied past -- the Acropolis, the Colisseum, the Cathedral at Chartres, Westminister Abbey, yes, and even Stonehenge -- but we Americans worship our founding documents, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and, since Lincoln elevated its importance in the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence. It was a wartime inaugural address. "That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood," Obama said. "Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet." On three critical debates of our time, the new president, faced with the usual two choices, took a "none of the above" view:

• Free markets: Obama said the power of markets to generate wealth is unmatched but "the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."
• Government: the solution or the problem? Rejecting both the Roosevelt and Reagan views, Obama said the question "is not whether our government is too big or too small but whether it works."
• Individual freedoms or national security: "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama said. "Our Founding Fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man...and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

On foreign policy, there was this paragraph for foreign ministries around the world to analyze: "To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." I have already heard one linguistics expert suggest that the second and third sentence, which many will assume refers to the Muslims of the first sentence, may instead refer to North Korea and certain recalcitrant African regimes. More inaugural addresses than not have proven not to be memorable. Even the ones that included words like "With malice toward none, with charity toward all," and, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," contained their longeurs, and so did this one. I don't remember a word of the two Clinton inaugurals I covered on-scene, and I remember little of the Reagan inaugurals though he was a professional actor and before that a professional broadcaster. We will see what we remember of Obama's address. A few loose notes...

• The Punahou band looked and sounded good and a delighted Obama repeatedly shaka'ed them. The moment was especially well marked on our own CBS broadcast, enlivened by a network reporter who is also a Punahou alumna.
• Aretha Franklin is a grandmother but she's still got it.
• Rev. Joseph Lowrey's closing prayer was affecting, poetic and funny.
• It pleases me very much to see the evident good feeling between the Bushes and the Obamas, and to hear that the elder George Bush and Bill Clinton have become friends in recent years. I cannot help but think that the more civility and affection there can be between people of different political views, the better for the Republic.

American history, through its inaugural addresses

I have been perusing presidential inaugural addresses through history. George Washington gave his first inaugural address from a Wall Street balcony in 1789, discussing the debate over the relative powers of state and federal government, and calling on Congress to "avoid every alteration [to the Constitution] which might endanger the benefits of a united and effective government, or which ought to await the future lessons of experience." John Adams, inaugurated in Philadelphia in 1797, noted that he was abroad working as an ambassador when the Constitution was written, had the luxury of reading it without any personal involvement in its production, and "I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads prompted by good hearts." The Constitution was still topic one when Thomas Jefferson took the oath at the partially completed U.S. Capitol in 1801. "Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail," he said, "the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect." Four years later, for the first time, a new issue rose to the fore. Jefferson had the Louisiana Purchase to defend, and did. "Is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family? With which should we be most likely to live in harmony?" Jefferson stood in the crowd with 10,000 other citizens when James Madison was inaugurated in 1809. Madison, who would have to flee the White House during a British invasion in the War of 1812, entered office determined to keep America out of European conflicts, "to maintain sincere neutrality...to exclude foreign intrigues...so degrading to all countries." The next several inaugural addresses all refer to the issue of settlers and Indians, usually adopting a kindly view toward Indians which, however, also usually included the idea of encouraging them to adopt the newer inhabitants' ways. James Monroe, in 1817, also referred to the Barbary pirates, though he called them the Barbary Powers. In 1825, John Quincy Adams, son of a Founding Father, became president of a nation with territory "from sea to sea" and a population triple what it was when the republic was formed. "If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation," he said, "those doubts have now been dispelled." Andrew Jackson, four years later, promised respect for states' rights and to work to lower the federal debt. The near-riot that attended the inaugural partying that day -- Jackson's supporters trashed the White House and the president himself climbed through a window to escape the melee -- has left us with the idea that Jackson himself was a bumpkin, but his address had much same tone as its predecessors. Martin Van Buren, in 1837, noted that he was too young to have been around at the birth of the nation, but felt that the ideas of the founding fathers had been "verified by time," and said, "The principle that will govern me...is a strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was designed by those who framed it." In 1841, William Henry Harrison, 68, spoke for an hour and 45 minutes in a snowstorm, then partied late into the night. A month later he was dead of pneumonia. Though there are no soundbites in his blizzard of words, it is actually a fairly interesting discourse on the Constitutional limits of executive power as compared to ancient Greece and Rome, and to the power grabs of Caesar, Cromwell and Bolivar. In 1845, James Polk spoke for states' rights, and warned against forcing Southern states to abandon slavery, though he never used the term. He promised to curb spending, saying, "Ours was intended to be a plain and frugal government." In 1849, Zachary Taylor was first to refer to George Washington in an inaugural address as "the Father of his Country." Franklin Pierce, the only president to choose to "affirm" rather than to "swear" the oath, took office in 1853. "The founders," he said, "dealt with things as they were presented to them...with a comprehensive wisdom which it will always be safe for us to consult." In 1857, James Buchanan got right into the issue of the day, whether new states should be allowed to have slaves or not. He thought it should be up to them. In criticizing Congress for some of its actions on the matter, he became the first inaugural speaker to refer to Congress in any manner other than what be described as obsequious. I read every inaugural address up to and through Lincoln's and can tell you that not one paragraph in any of them approaches the quality of writing that pervades Lincoln's addresses, which, please note, he wrote himself. In 1861, Lincoln was still pleading with the Southern states to calm down and stick with the Union. He quoted both his own campaign speeches and the platform of his party to assure them that he did not intend to impose abolition on them. But he also argued that secession would be sedition. "One party to a contract may violate it," he said, "but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?" He said North and South would live next to each other, and engage in commerce, whether they were united or not, and added, "Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws?" Four years later, in his second inaugural address, came the first great sound bite quote, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God give us to see the right." Less than two months later Lincoln was shot to death. Some really boring inaugural addresses came in the years that followed, as the florid rhetoric that in the past had been placed in homage to the Constitution was instead aimed at transitory issues. But in 1905 Teddy Roosevelt said, "Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us," and in 1917 Woodrow Wilson declared America an imperial power with the words, "We are provincials no longer." I realize, after reading dozens of these addresses, that most of these presidents were not thinking of posterity when they made their most memorable remarks, but were rather trying to use the occasion of their inauguration to shape the political debate of the day. That is what FDR was doing in 1933, in the Great Depression, when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," and that is what Ronald Reagan was doing in 1981 when he said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government IS the problem."

The public be damned, and other traditional favorites

There are different versions of the "The public be damned!" outburst attributed to New York Central Railway head Cornelius Vanderbilt, but the version that carries the general thrust most succinctly goes on to say, "I'm working for my shareholders!" A Chicago newspaper reporter published the remark in 1882 after accosting the mogul in his private car to ask about the cancellation of a train the public liked.  "The railroads are not run for the benefit of the dear public," Vanderbilt said. "They are built by men who invest their money and expect to get a fair percentage on the same." That's rich, because Vanderbilt was an inheritor, not a builder. His father built the railroad, leaving him $100 million when he died in 1877. That was real money in those days, not the chump change it is now. But the general idea is important because it is widely held today. It is even the law. A publicly-held company's executives are indeed working for their shareholders, and have a legal responsibility to them, so long as it does not conflict with the requirements of other regulations and laws. Which brings us to the headline in the Sunday editions of The New York Times, "Bailout is a No-Strings Windfall to Bankers, if Not to Borrowers." Mike McIntyre, who wrote the article, opens with a quote from John Hope III, president of a New Orleans bank that accepted $300 million in bailout money: "Make more loans? We're not going to change our business model to accommodate the needs of the public...." The article has example after example of banks that took bailout dough saying they will not use it to lend more,  but instead will either sit on it to improve their cash picture or use it to make acquisitions. Shocked? Don't be. At least, don't be shocked that bank presidents are looking out for their themselves and their shareholders. Never mind that they know, and are happy to concede, that they only got the money because Congress thought they would do the thing that they won't do, lend more. Blaming bankers for being bankers would be to blame alligators for eating small children after a zookeeper left a gate open. The alligators were just doing their jobs. The zookeeper is the one who didn't do his. That's the problem with our gatekeepers in Washington. They're supposed to make and enforce rules for people who, if they are doing their own jobs, work as close to the line as possible. Regulators and the officials who give them their marching orders can wish for voluntary compliance, and in some arenas of business there is sufficient courtesy and chilvary to do this, but when that isn't going to work, one levels the playing field and keeps everyone honest by making a fair rule and enforcing it. Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan actively lobbied to prevent regulator Brooksley Born from doing her job in 1999 when she foresaw the collapse of the exotic mortgages and credit swap markets. He has since confessed he placed too much trust in major institutions being careful for the sake of their own reputations. Born saw all this coming and pleaded with Congress to at least require financial institutions to report how many eggs they were putting in this basket. Congress instead clipped her wings by removing her agency's authority. She retired. President Bush's treasury secretary was twice as dumb, because he placed an almost identical trust in the same institutions after they had already shown their true colors. "Reputation be damned! I'm working for my shareholders!" But Hank Paulsen still wrung from Congress a bailout plan that did not require banks to lend the money they were lent, or even to report what they would do with it. It is a safe bet Paulsen, who was also responsible for the collapse of Lehman Brothers, will not go down in history as one of the 30 or 40 best treasury secretaries the Republic has ever had. If the public needs banks to do X, and their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders impels them to do Y, don't  be surprised if the public is, in fact, damned, unless banks are absolutely required to do Y.

Weather forecast blows

"Never mind," the National Weather Service said, after an initial warning of winds close to 60 mph that led to widespread closures across much of the state. We did indeed get high gusting winds and localized flooding, but not on the scale that forecasters expected. Instead of a gale, we got a lot of hot air from ourselves, as we all exchanged our conspiracy theories about officials who, we theorized, decided to be "better safe than sorry" in order to stretch a three-day weekend into four days. Conspiracy theories are good clean fun so long as you have a passing acquaintance with reality from time to time, so here's your reality check. For logistical reasons, if you're going to close whole systems -- the UH system was closed, along with most of the public school system, state government and the courts -- it's a decision you have to make before morning. There are too many people to contact to wait until later. On the mainland, in temperate zones, when snow is forecasted, school systems assign people to drive the schoolbus routes and phone in to report conditions. Often a county will close its school system on reports of dangerous roads in remote sections of the county, and residents of lower-lying areas where the roads are better will wonder why the school system thought it was necessary to shut down. More broadly, roads that are slippery at 3 a.m. are sometimes a lot better by sunrise if that's how the weather is. In this case, overnight decisions on closures had to be made before the predicted arrival of the dangerous winds, so officials understandably acted on the expectation that the forecasters might be right. Their call was wrong only because the forecast turned out to be wrong. It happens. In the newsroom Friday morning some colleagues wanted to know how the business community would be affected. Some offices might suffer if people stayed home to take care of kids who might otherwise have been at work. Retailers could actually benefit, especially enclosed malls, which tend to do extra trade when the weather is inclement, a kind of cabin fever effect.

A cold day in Washington

It will be a cold day in Washington, D.C., when Barack Obama takes the presidential oath. Nothing personal; it's nearly always very cold at presidential inaugurals. William Henry Harrison, the hero of the French and Indian Wars whose presidency lasted one month, caught the pneumonia that killed him on Inauguration Day, when he delivered an address lasting well over an hour during a blizzard. The parade for Ronald Reagan's second inauguration had to be canceled because it was so cold that trumpets would have frozen to their players' lips. The two inaugurations I covered on-site, rather than back in the newsroom, were the two of the Clinton administration, and I froze my okole both times. For those flying to D.C. this weekend to attend the Obama inauguration, here's how it works. There are rows of tents for security checks, with the same sort of equipment you see at the airport. The size of the crowd is almost unimaginable and you had better have a clear idea in your head of where you are supposed to go. For me it was a particular line to a particular numbered tent that handled just media. (Don't count on getting last-minute directions by cell phone -- the cells can overload at the U.S. Capitol because too many people are using them.) Past the checkpoints, you have a very specific assigned place to be. If you're in a crowd, you won't see as much, but the crowd will provide a windbreak and if you're standing for hours you can at least discreetly stamp your feet. I was co-anchoring UPI Radio Network live coverage with the network's longtime Senate correspondent and political commentator Pye Chamberlayne; we and our engineer Sam Brown had to climb up several flights of open metal scaffolding to a rickety level that provided a superb view of everything but no protection from the wind. And we had to sit on metal chairs. The word freezing does not begin to convey how cold it was. Being personally present provides a comprehensive view that television cannot convey, but I'm not sure it's worth being so cold. But let that pass. The most efficient way to get around D.C. at such a busy time is Metrorail. The Red Line has a station beneath Union Station, three blocks north of the Capitol, on Senate side, and the Blue/Orange Lines (downtown they share the same route) is three blocks south, on House side. These lines all intersect at Metro Center, so you can get anywhere from anywhere with an occasional change of train. Capitol Hill is higher on the north side. So if you go to the Capitol from Union Station, and leave by walking to Capitol South, you will always be walking downhill. Addenda After learning that this post was being circulated among people attending the festivities, I thought I should add some more basic advice. If you're a civilian attending the event, forget rental cars or cabs and take Metro. It goes everywhere you need to go and there is a map in every car, allowing you to doublecheck that you're going in the right direction before you find yourself in a remote Maryland or Virginia suburb. The farecard has an arrow on it and that's the way you put it into the farecard reader. It goes in on the side but returns to you on the top. If trains are packed, the cars at the far front and back may be slightly less full. If you have to stand, try to stand near a pole. Blocks are long in Washington. Before you walk a long distance to the main entrance of a building, make sure security officers have diverted people to a less conspicuous entryway. The movement of crowds will show you the way. Washington has more police forces than Honolulu has ABCs. The Capitol has its own police force and so does the Park Service. There is a separate police force to guard diplomats (the Executive Protection Service or something like that) and the Metropolitan Police. Be patient if you are stopped repeatedly or even given conflicting orders. It is no individual officer's fault. Media people attending the event: the television network bureaus are mostly in the K Street area north and slightly west of the White House, not close to the Capitol. The little television stringer bureaus tend to be congregated on New Jersey Ave., north of the Capitol. The AP offices used to be at 1825 K St. N.W. and I think are still in that general area. NPR is on Massachusetts Ave. a couple blocks northwest of Union Station. The commercial radio stations are in upper Northwest, including Bonneville-owned WTOP Newsradio on Idaho Ave. and ABC-owned WMAL in Bethesda. With the traffic the way it will be, trying to get from most of these bases of operation to Capitol Hill will be roughly analogous to commuting between Aiea and downtown Honolulu in the middle of rush hour. Will you find Washingtonians friendly and helpful? Well, it depends. Most people who live in D.C. are not from D.C., so they bring them birthplace behaviors with them. I can tell you that avoiding conversation in an elevator or subway car does not necessarily connote unfriendliness; most big cities don't have the tradition of yacking with strangers that we do. The excitement of the day generally makes people let down their guard a little. If you're staying in Virginia, be advised that its ABC stores are liquor stores. In the Commonwealth of Virginia, ABC stands for Alcohol & Beverage Commission.

Health: a company ' s, its CEO ' s, and its shareholders '

The Bloomberg News Service reported Thursday that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was having his pancreas removed due to cancer, raising fresh questions about whether Apple was sufficiently forthcoming on the subject of Jobs' health. On Wednesday, Jobs sent an email to Apple employees which said, in part, "Curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought." He announced he was taking a medical leave of absence. The backstory is that progressive weight loss by Jobs fanned the rumor mill. Reports that he had pancreatic cancer were denied. Apple said as recently as June that Jobs had "a common bug." There are indications Jobs may still have a rare form of pancreatic cancer -- he revealed it after he thought he was cured of it -- and some recent changes in official accounts may reflect doctors' changing views of his condition, not outright concealment of his condition. But I don't see anyone asserting that doctors confused cancer with "a common bug" and it seems reasonable to assume that, especially in the early going, Jobs and Apple deliberately withheld some information about his illness. This is not merely a privacy issue, because the health of a company's chief economic officer can affect how the company is run. An argument can be made that a major illness for the CEO has material impact and should be reported in a filing to the Securities & Exchange Commission. At the same time, a regular person would certainly consider the condition of his internal organs to be nobody else's business unless he chooses to regale them with reports on his colonoscopy, or whatever. It is easy to understand why a CEO, being, among other things, human, would have an initial instinct not to want to discuss his ailments with MSNBC. It's not just (from the CEO's point of view) an instinct to keep one's innards private. There is also the realization that a revelation of serious illness could have deleterious effects on the company's health as well. Steve Jobs knew that a report that he had pancreatic cancer, which is harder to survive than some others, would have sent Apple stock down. Shareholders might then have pressed for Jobs' replacement, in order to protect their investment, even though they otherwise may have felt that he was the best of all possible CEOs for Apple. From Monday to Thursday morning, as rumors circulated and finally were partially confirmed, Apple stock did fall from $90 to $80 a share. Analysts cut their ratings on Apple stock. They're just doing their job: their customers pay them to guess what will happen to stocks, even if rumors are driving the changes they predict. This obliges them to listen to the rumor mill. One reason shareholders may be concerned is that they may remember what happened at a long distance company a generation ago. MCI founder William McGowan was still running the company in 1986 when he had a heart attack and, a few months later, got a heart transplant. MCI withheld news of both developments for several weeks. McGowan was still running MCI in 1992 when he had another heart attack and died. It is probably worth remembering that even a gravely ill CEO may still be able to lead, or may have lieutenants capable of keeping the flag flying. Dave Banmiller, the last CEO of Aloha Airlines, became gravely ill with a brain aneurism just a few months before the airline lost its funding and closed. Brain aneurisms are often fatal. Yet he lived. He's fine now. And while he was hospitalized -- something kept secret for months -- he continued to act as CEO in negotiations with labor unions and prospective acquisition partners. Only three or four other people in the company, at the most, knew that he was flat on his back and that one of his lieutenants was carrying his pager. The rest of us should be so effective when we're NOT sick. Banmiller knew that putting an acquisition deal together was tricky as jet fuel prices soared and credit tightened, and figured public knowledge of his hospitalization could kill all possible deals and put thousands of people out of work. That eventually happened anyway, but not for several more weeks. And a few extra paychecks are a few extra paychecks.

Taking stock when there is news about a company

People ask me why stocks sometimes rise on bad news or fall or good news. Though I propose to continue pointing it out from time to time so we can laugh at how crazy it seems, there is a non-crazy reason for it. Stocks rise and fall BEFORE good and bad news, because investors who are akamai, or think they are, like to get ahead of the curve. But then, when the actual news comes out, it is sometimes better or worse than what the market expected. If they get it right, the stock may not move much at all. That's when you hear analysts say that "the market factored this in already." When a stock moves in the opposite direction from what you would expect, it means it already moved in the "correct" direction, but too far, based on a report that was not as good or bad as the allegedly akamai investors expected. In fact, every time a stock responds to news by moving in the opposite direction from what you would think, it should serve as a reminder that the experts aren't as smart as they think they are.

The Big Kahuna and the big recession

For years there was a joint on Puuloa Rd. on the west edge of Mapunapuna called Big Kahuna Pizza, noted for its immense pizzas and cheese balls (a savory analog to Liliha Bakery's coco puffs, a similar-sized ball of dough covered with mozzarella). The Big Kahuna looked like part of the set of M*A*S*H. One day it was gone, and nobody could tell me if it moved or went out of business. This was years ago. This week I learned that it did not go out of business, but moved to the Airport Retail Center, that strip mall at Honolulu airport, on the same street Byron's is on but the opposite side, on the left as you exit the airport from the arrivals level. Much of what gave the place its distinctive look has been saved, and though the outside looks like just another strip mall eatery, the inside still has the old charm. The food is still good, too. Kelly Suchotzski still owns the place and it was hopping when I was there, but she says business has been slower at the new location, and I think I know why. Remember I said nobody could tell me if she had moved or closed? I looked online and there are loads of references to Big Kahuna Pizza but nearly all of them refer to the old location. The move somehow didn't make it onto a lot of people's radar. Now, here's the thing. It's a recession and a lot of businesses will be slow. Let's be careful not to let the McInerny Effect take place again. When McInerny folded its tent at Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center years ago, everybody was sorry about it, but I couldn't find anyone who had actually bought anything there in the year before it closed. Among the tightest margins in the retail business are restaurants. Let's not forget our favorite local eateries, whether it's Kelly's joint or Byron's or Chai's or Chef Mavro for that matter, and then weep about it later if something goes horribly wrong. Make a list in your own mind of places you want to survive the downturn, and patronize them now.

Is HECO wired for incompetence?

Hawaiian Electric Co. has now confirmed, as expected, that its latest islandwide power outage was caused by lightning strikes to power lines. But there was a surprise -- it also turns out that a factor in the calamity was that the wires are spaced 10 feet apart, not 15 feet as is common in places that get more frequent electrical storms. HECO quite rightly reminds us at every opportunity that it operates at a special disadvantage because it is not connected to a larger grid, which would make it easier to spread the load and avoid breakers tripping like dominos falling over when failing lines or substations sends too much power in some other direction. But when customers ask why they don't undertake special measures to make up for this, like wider spacing for power lines or faster incremental restart, the company always says it would be very expensive, as if we are supposed to say, "Oh, well, never mind then, I'll just endure the occasional 12-hour outage." I have mentioned before that the company announced after the 2006 earthquake outage it was reviewing its procedures, and a year later when I had a company spokesman on he said exactly the same thing and could not provide even one small example of anything whatever that had changed. Now we've had another really long outage, threatening lives, inconveniencing many, and seriously damaging our reputation with visitors, thus harming our entire economy, and once again HECO has given its spokespeople nothing more to say than that rewiring its power lines would be expensive. At this point I'm not sure if the company's practices are really so indefensible or if its management simply dropping the ball by not providing its spokespeople with information that would have somehow caused us to be more sanguine about this. The seeming incompetence may be confined to public relations (the best PR department in the world cannot function ably if a company's operational management will not provide sufficient information to defend the company's practices) or it may be pervasive. I'm not a "heads should roll" kind of guy. HECO should simply do a better job. If the solutions are "expensive" the company should cost it out and tell us what the impact on rates would be. The economic impact is also expensive. Really expensive. HECO just got a new CEO and maybe he can take a fresh look at this. In fairness to HECO I do not want to fail to mention that it is planning a new power plant that will have faster restart capacity than its other ones do. This could help a lot. But again it's hard to be certain because of the vague information supplied about it. Otherwise this could get worse. Over the next 10 years, the biggest change to our power grid will be the proliferation of third party power providers -- solar, wind and biofuels power generators, ranging from big operations like regular power plants, to little guys who have solar panels on the roof and sell their excess power back to the grid. This will complicate the grid -- some third party suppliers will offer highly variable amounts of electricity based on cloudy skies, gusting trades or, in the case of rooftop solar panels, their own power needs -- and what I'm afraid of is that, if HECO is truly failing to manage its infrastructure properly, this will both increase the risk of trouble and provide a fresh excuse for it.

When 7% is bigger than 13%

I did not excel at high school mathematics and neither, chances are, did you. Yet we both remember the sometimes elegant nature of certain really long numbers that continue endlessly after the decimal point, usually one number repeating forever, sometimes a more complicated pattern repeating. But one endless fraction that seems never to resolve into a pattern of any sort is pi: pi=3.141592655358979323846.... In Simon Singh's book on the solving of Fermat's Last Theorem ["Fermat's Enigma," Anchor Books, 1999] there is a lot of cool trivia about numbers, including something I didn't know about pi -- it, too, has an elegant pattern, which cannot be seen when it is expressed with decimal fractions. pi=4 -1/3 +1/5 -1/7 +1/9 -1/11 +1/13 -1/15 +1/17 -1/19 +1/21 -1/23 +1/25.... Expressing pi this way not only reveals the pattern that decimal fractions conceal, it also shows how calculating it just a few fractions out gives you most of the picture that you would get by calculating it to 6 billion decimal places as Yasumasa Kanada of the University of Tokyo did in 1996. After all, 1/25 is merely 4%. Indeed, Singh says if you calculate pi to just 39 decimal places you can calculate the circumference of the universe, accurate to the radius of a hydrogen atom. I use percentages so much to report change in economic metrics -- joblessness, retail sales, median home prices -- that from time to time it feels necessary to put out a reminder of how percentages can be misleading. The problem with percentages is that you are always dealing with a percentage OF something, and a small percentage of a big number can be a bigger number than a large percentage of a small one. In the last unemployment breakdown of 2008 -- well, the last one ISSUED in 2008, covering November; the December figures will probably be out soon -- unemployment was almost 13% on Molokai and "only" 7% on the Big Island. But in this case, 7% is worse than 13%, because the Big Island has the second largest population of any county, while Molokai has a population of a few thousand. Molokai has joblessness in the low hundreds while the Big Island measures it in thousands. I bring this up, not to belittle the very serious unemployment problem that Molokai has, but to make sure we don't belittle the worsening problem that the Big Island has. A "number" that is merely percentage change from month to month or year to year, without keeping in mind percentage of WHAT, is incomplete unless you have at least a general idea of what the WHAT is.