4A
OPINION
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 | WEST HAWAII TODAY
W
ASHINGTON
— Ladies and
gentlemen,
boys and girls, children
of all ages: Step right up
and witness a feat that
will astound and amaze
you. See Hillary Clinton
being warm and funny.
It’s the season premiere
of “The Ellen DeGeneres
Show” in Rockefeller Plaza
this week, and Clinton is
bopping, waving, laugh-
ing and enjoying herself
oh-so conspicuously. She
resolutely keeps a smile
on her face even when
DeGeneres asks about
Clinton’s email controversy.
She jokes about what
her baby granddaughter
will call her: “I’m fine with
‘Madam President.’” She
offers to roller-skate with
Amy Schumer. She jokes
about her age: “I would be
the youngest woman ever
elected president.” And
she joshes about when she
sang to baby Chelsea: “She
reached her finger up and
goes, ‘no sing, mommy.’”
We knew Clinton was
going to be funny and
warm because her aides
told The New York Times
she was going to be funny
and warm. “Hillary Clinton
to Show More Humor and
Heart, Aides Say,” was the
headline on Amy Chozick’s
piece this week, reporting
that “there will be new
efforts to bring sponta-
neity to a candidacy that
sometimes seems wooden
and overly cautious.”
“They want to show her
humor,” Chozick said of
the advisers. “They want
to show her heart.” They
want this even though
previous such efforts
“backfired amid criticism
that the efforts seemed
overly poll tested.”
Maybe they seemed
poll-tested because they
were poll-tested, but
no matter: “The com-
ing months will also
be a period of trying to
shed her scriptedness.”
Planned spontaneity?
A scripted attempt to go
off script? This puts the
“moron” into oxymoron.
Here’s a better idea:
Find and fire people who
talk about her that way.
Thin out the whole bloated
campaign and its cadre
of consultants, and shed
those who orchestrate these
constant makeovers of
Clinton. Then, rather than
stage-managing a strategy
to appear spontaneous,
Clinton might actually
be spontaneous — and
regain some semblance
of her authentic self.
Seven months ago, my
colleagues Philip Rucker and
Anne Gearan wrote about
Clinton hiring consumer
marketing specialists “to
help imagine Hillary 5.0.”
There have been several
incarnations since then:
Her coy “I’m thinking about
it” period, her soft-launch,
her populist pitch to help
“everyday Americans”
(Chozick reports Clinton is
dropping the phrase because
it didn’t “resonate”). There
was the thrifty Clinton
campaign that ordered
staff to take the Bolt Bus,
instead of Amtrak, between
New York and Washington.
First Clinton was defiant
about her email server;
now she’s “transparent” and
apologetic. The headline
on Mark Leibovich’s piece
in The New York Times
Magazine in July was
“Re-Re-Re-Reintroducing
Hillary Clinton.”
And now comes the
latest of many warm-and-
funny makeovers — per-
haps the most transparent
phoniness since Al Gore
discovered earth tones.
Clinton’s campaign
spent $18.7 million in the
second quarter, dramati-
cally more than any other.
The mid-July report said
she received $815,000
worth of services from
strategist Joel Benenson’s
firm alone. Since then, the
campaign launched a $4
million ad blitz in Iowa
and New Hampshire.
And what does she
have to show for it? A
Quinnipiac Poll Thursday
found that Clinton had
shed 12 points in Iowa
in two months and now
trailed the vastly outspent
(but authentic) Sen. Bernie
Sanders of Vermont, 41
percent to 40 percent.
She was already trailing
in New Hampshire.
Certainly, part of
Clinton’s problem comes
from her very authentic
secrecy, which led to the
disastrous decision to have
a private email server. But
her campaign makes her
problems worse. She has
an inner circle of loyalists
who can’t, or won’t, tell her
when she’s making a bad
decision, as with her initial
grudging response to the
email controversy. And she
has a group of hired guns,
imported from the Obama
campaign, who sell her
as if she is a new formula
of detergent each week.
What if Clinton were to
chuck all that? What would
remain is this: a lifelong
advocate for children who
worked for the Children’s
Defense Fund rather than
taking a high-paying job
after law school; a woman
who cares more about
those in need than her hus-
band ever did; a policy nerd
who believes government
can be a force for good.
Maybe voters in this
anti-establishment, pop-
ulist moment still won’t
embrace a foreign-policy
hawk with ties to Wall
Street. But what voters
reject every time is a phony.
If Clinton ditches the con-
stant makeovers and still
loses, she at least will have
the dignity of knowing
she was her own person.
Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter,
Milbank.
It’s time to think about
an electric cooperative
This is a call to think about a community-
owned electricity provider — a cooperative.
Starting 80 years ago in rural areas
across America, there are now 900 utility
cooperatives, including one on Kauai.
Could Hawaii Island become one?
There are many benefits to having an
electric utility that is community owned.
Clearly a local entity, controlled by us
ratepayers, will be much more responsive
to our needs than an entity controlled by a
board of directors 5,000 miles away, whose
primary duty is to their shareholders.
I am working with a nonprofit group,
Hawaii Island Energy Cooperative
(HIEC). It seeks to inform residents of
the potential benefits and possible pitfalls,
so that our community can be prepared
should an opportunity present itself.
The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative
has been operating successfully for 13
years, after taking over a company that
had been in serious financial trouble. In
that time, $30 million has been returned
to the Kauai member community.
The Hawaii Public Utilities
Commission will soon decide whether
the Hawaiian Electric Industries’
utilities should be absorbed by NextEra,
a corporate giant out of Florida.
I support HIEC’s education efforts
and look forward to hearing what our
community has to say about it. Please
join the many people statewide calling
for the PUC to put other options on
the table. I hope you will attend the
PUC’s listening sessions at 6 p.m. Sept.
29 at Hilo High School or at 6 p.m.
Sept. 30 at Kealakehe High School.
Russell Ruderman
Owner, Island Naturals
Keaau
Waikoloa Road needs paved
shoulders, not more gravel
Waikoloa residents and West Hawaii
residents, it’s that time again where the
county decides to waste more resources
messing with Waikoloa Road traffic
situation. Yes, it’s bandage time once again.
The nasty shoulder gravel and shoulder
grading is taking place starting toward the
mauka end of Waikoloa Road. I’ve been
traveling up and down this road for the
better part of 31 years and I still haven’t
seen any benefit to the gravel shouldering.
In all of these years, the amount of money
wasted on this type of bandage could have
gone toward paving the shoulders a couple
of times over. Now it’s gotten to the point
where the cost of paving has reached an
expense that could be out of reach.
We need real, up to code, wide shoulders
on Waikoloa Road. We also need slow-
moving vehicle lanes. There is a 2.3-mile
stretch of road just mauka of the village
that has paved shoulders, and these
are a fine example of what needs to be
done with the rest of Waikoloa Road.
How many more people have to either
crash or more tragically die before the
county fixes the problem that is Waikoloa
Road, without the use of “Band-Aids”?
For more than 31 years this road has been
the link to the truck traffic that is used to
build and repair all of the other roads in
and around the area, and yet it is to receive
another expensive and wasteful bandage.
David Rooney
Waikoloa
Collecting taxes is government work
Clinton campaign puts the ‘moron’ into oxymoron
DANA MILBANK |
THE WASHINGTON POST
EDITORIAL |
THE NEWS YORK TIMES
B
uried in the Senate-
passed version of the
big highway bill is a
provision that would require
the Treasury secretary to
use private debt collectors to
collect unpaid back taxes.
The provision, added to the
bill by Republican leaders, is
ostensibly intended to help
pay for highways. But it’s a
bad idea that should be kept
out of the House version
of the bill and out of any
final compromise version.
Private tax collection was
tried in the 1990s and in
the 2000s. Both times it
lost money. It increases the
cost of handling complaints
and appeals at the Internal
Revenue Service, and it is
far less efficient than simply
increasing the collection
budget of the IRS.
Worse, it fosters taxpayer
abuse. The debts involved
are ones that the IRS has not
been able to collect, in part
because the taxpayers are too
hard-pressed to pay up. A
private company is probably
not going to have better luck
unless it uses abusive tactics.
And yet, private tax
collection is an idea that keeps
resurfacing. Why? One reason
is that it would be a cash cow
for the four companies likely
to win tax-collection contracts,
two in New York, one in
California and one in Iowa.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,
has argued in the past that
using federal money to pay
private companies for tax
collection would create jobs
at those companies. But it
would be better to increase the
IRS budget to create middle-
class public-sector jobs in
professional tax collection than
to throw money at low-paying
private-sector contractors who
cannot do the job as well.
One of the potential
tax-collection contractors,
Pioneer Credit Recovery
in New York, recently lost
its contract with the U.S.
Department of Education to
collect past-due student debt
because it repeatedly gave
borrowers misleading and
inaccurate information.
Collecting taxes and
maintaining highways
are essential functions of
government. By attempting
to privatize tax collection to
finance highways, the Senate
fails to serve the public interest.
Will the House do better?
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