Best use of taxpayer dollars

Education

Back before Whitney Houston started holing up in her bathroom and cuddling with a crack pipe and a Rabbit Pearl, the R&B diva uttered these utterly undeniable words of wisdom–’I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way.’ Evidently, you feel the same way. When it comes to the best use of taxpayers dollars, you didn’t say, lining the streets of Waikiki with trees. You said, education. We couldn’t agree with you more. Now if only our elected officials would use a bit of that money to repair the ramshackle buildings our keiki have to learn the 3 Rs in. That would really be something.

Worst use of taxpayer dollars

Tie: Town meetings for rail, homeless

So, you think it’s a bad idea that the public was given the opportunity to learn about the city’s mass transit plans? So you think it was wrong to give taxpayers a chance to question the powers that be before they embarked on the most expensive project in the state’s history? Surely, that’s not what you meant when you declared the city’s series of rail transit meetings to be the worst use of taxpayer dollars. Right? And that’s not the only head scratcher here. The other winner, ‘homeless,’ just doesn’t make sense as an answer. But we think we know what some of you were trying to say. You don’t think the city and state should help those who find themselves living on our city streets and in our parks because they can’t afford to pay rent or they suffer from mental illness or they are addicted to drugs and need treatment? That’s harsh. Here’s hoping you are always able to pay your bills.< \c:

Best display of grace under pressure by a local politician

Linda Lingle, Mufi Hannemann

Grace under pressure is not shooting your hunting buddy in the face with birdshot and then trying to cover it up. Grace under pressure is not molesting a female passenger on an airplane flight and then hoping that your pals at the state Legislature don’t question why you’re flying back to L.A. for court. No, grace under pressure is finding emergency housing for the hundreds of homeless that your municipal counterpart just kicked out of Ala Moana Beach Park with little or no advanced warning. That’s what Gov. Linda Lingle did, and for that reason you’ve honored her here. Lingle has a strange bedfellow in this category. No. No. Get your mind out of the gutter. We’re talking about Mayor Hannemann. Who else but a calm-and-collected cat like Mufi would have the balls to fix an impending sewage system crisis by dumping 48 million tons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal? Nobody, that’s who.

Worst state agency or department

Tie: Honolulu Police Department, the Department of Motor Vehicles

Look, there is absolutely no point in going to the DMV if you haven’t packed at least three meals. The waits are just that long. Even worse: If you don’t have 14 different forms of ID in your hands when you finally step up to the counter, you’ll be turned away like a crippled beggar child on the snow-covered streets of Victorian London pulling on the coat sleeves of Ebenezer Scrooge. For these reasons and many others, the DMV is the most unholy place this side of hell. But the HPD? The 5-0? Come on. The police are our friends. Yes, they hand out parking tickets. Yes, they will slap you with a big fine if they catch you speeding up the Pali. Yes, they will throw you in jail for exposing yourself to tourists at the DFS. But when a nogoodnik is chasing you down Hotel Street at 4:30 in the morning, you don’t shout out ‘Parks and Recreation,’ now do ya? Where’s the love?

Best person to run for governor that isn’t running

Harry Kim

For months, Big Island Mayor Harry Kim teases the Democratic Party faithful, leading them to believe that he’s going to run for governor. But then at the last minute he pulls a Ricky Williams and steps away from the game. Unlike like Ricky the Rastafarian, though, Kim can’t blame pakalolo for his decision not to run. And with Kim out of the picture, Gov. Linda Lingle is left without a true competitor in November. Way to go, Democrats. That’s showing the Republicans who’s the boss. Other reader picks included Matthew Fox; Bette Midler; Steve, my imaginary friend and the guy who sells papers at King and University Streets.

Best source of constant aggravation for Mayor Hannemann

Charles Djou

Look, 2008 isn’t that far away. If any candidate hopes to beat Mufi in the mayoral race, they need to be on it. Pronto. Right now. He’s going to be tough to beat. Charles Djou knows this, and he’s been on the campaign trail all year long. Give him a chance to one up Hannemann, and Djou is apt to take it. On almost any given issue, the two gentlemen are bound to be at odds–whether Djou is claiming that the mayor bullied council members and business owners to block Chuck’s Kalakaua Avenue street performer ban or alleging that Hannemann helped a friend secure a gig with the mass transit project, the councilmember has made it perfectly clear that he is going to challenge Mufi, now and in the future.

Best Dubious Political Superpower

Sam Slom’s X-Ray Vision

At the Right to Life rally held on January 20 to mark the 33rd anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, Sam Slom, the Republican senator from District 8, announced that after walking by Pro-Choice protestors organized by, among other groups, Not In Our Name, he could tell by looking at his ideological opponents that they were truly evil. ‘I looked at their faces,’ Slom told the gathering at the State Capitol. ‘Those are not the faces of love. Those are the faces of hate and divisiveness.’ One wonders what else the man sees when he looks at the faces of those who might disagree with him. One wonders exactly how he knows what the face of love is supposed to look like?–Tim Dyke

Best Local Candidate for American Idol

Mufi Hannemann

Face it. Mayor Hannemann picked the wrong career. This year the mayor has made one public misstep after another. First, he shelves the curbside recycling plan. Then he flushes 48 million gallons of sewage into the Ala Wai. Then he kicks all the homeless out of Ala Moana Park with no place to go. Then he tries to knock Honolulu City Councilmember Donovan Dela Cruz out of his seat as council chair. Come on, Mufi, stick to what you’re good at. Stick to singing. The first time we saw your video for your debut single ‘I Fell in Love With Honolulu’ we knew that a star was hiding out at Honolulu Hale. And while the song didn’t race up the charts, we still think you’re just as qualified to make it in the music business as Paris Hilton.

Best display of an inability to take a joke

Bev Harbin

By now, Bev Harbin has to be aware that she’s done more than her fair share to earn a spot as the court jester of the Honolulu political scene. First, she hides the fact that she spent time in the pokey for writing bad checks. Then she resigned from four state House of Representative committees, claiming that she didn’t have the experience to serve on any of them. Lastly, she sent a letter to the operator of the parody website [BevHarbin.com] threatening legal action. While the webmaster shut down the site rather than face a showdown in court, Harbin won’t hear the punch line to the joke that is her political career until September.

Worst single issue to base your entire campaign on

Change

You’ve had the same hairstyle since 1973. You’ve never once held a mouse in your hand and double-clicked. You’ve worn the same pair of underwear for 42 days straight. It’s time for a change. U.S. Rep. Ed Case wants change. In fact, he’s based his whole entire campaign on it. As for why Case thinks it’s time for a change, it has nothing to do with his opponent Daniel Akaka’s performance as a senator–nor his positions, nor his policies, nor his dubious honor as one of Time’s top five worst senators. Nope. For Ed, it all boils down to this: Akaka might not live through another term in office. And if that happens, Akaka’s influence, and ours as well, goes with it. His solution: Let’s end Akaka’s reign now so that the District 2 U.S. Representative can begin amassing favors from his would-be brothers and sisters in the Senate. Whether Case is right or not is irrelevant. Since he can’t fall back on his support of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act v 2.0 to win the hearts and minds of Hawai’i voters, Case’s entire platform consists of nothing more than a very public display of ageism.

Best proof that grassroots movements can take on big business and beat them at their own game

The Save Our Kaka’ako Coalition

Alexander and Baldwin’s plan to redevelop state-owned Kaka’ako makai was all but a done deal. The plans were all drawn up, and it looked quite promising. The industrial park warehouse wasteland was set to get an extreme makeover. But for some folks there was a problem: The plan included two residential high-rises, neither of which was designed to meet the housing needs of Honolulu’s residents. Nope. These units, by and large, would probably be sold off to vacationers. For the people who formed the Save Our Kaka’ako Coalition, that just wasn’t going to do. So they rallied. And they lobbied. And they raised hell. In the end, the Lege passed a bill to ban all residential construction at Kaka’ako makai, Gov. Lingle signed it into law and A&B dropped their plans all together. Who says the little guy doesn’t win, at least from time to time?

Best reason to wonder if Lt. Gov. James ‘Duke’ Aiona is on drugs

His starring role in a Narconon anti-drug DVD

Drugs are bad, and Kelly Preston is pretty. These are truths. But under no circumstances will drinking a cup of coffee put you to sleep. Not 10 cups, not 20, not 100. Caffeine is a stimulant, and a stimulant peps you up. It does not make you want to catch 50 winks. But that’s basically what L. Ron Hubbard concluded in his, um, scientific studies. That’s what his followers believe. And that’s what Narconon’s Keeping Your Kids Drug-Free DVD package teaches. Perhaps Lt. Gov. James Aiona had just finished blazing through a QP of sticky icky pakalolo when he watched this video and decided to endorse Narconon’s latest project. In the end, some 14,000 of these videos were distributed to Hawai’i schoolchildren. Next time you’re high, Duke, throw in the Matrix or something, man. It’ll blow your mind. Either that or throw in Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. It’s so bad it’s good.

Best reason for O’ahu residents to get their hands on a time machine

So we can send our elected officials into the future

>Unchecked growth. Gridlocked streets. Skyrocketing rents. Packed-to-capacity landfills. Deteriorating sewer lines. Rising oil prices. Name a problem we’ve got now, and imagine how bad it’s going to be in five, 10, 15 years. Yeah. That bad. If only we could find a way to convince our elected officials to do something about it. Sadly enough, sending them into the future so they can see the mess that this island will have become is our only solution. Unfortunately, time machines are merely the stuff of sci-fi stories and silver-screen dreams.