Hawaiian court orders Hawaiian government to pay $4 Billion damages for Maui fire. Guess whose taxes are going up?

Photo above: Wowie - Maui! Make an offer! Acres and acres of prime beachfront property now available. Upgraded electric and water utilities to be installed soon. This deal is too hot to pass up!

You can’t win. You can’t break even. You can’t even get out of the game. Not only is this how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics works, it now applies to citizens who have been damaged by their own governments. The state of Hawaii has ordered the state of Hawaii to pay $4 billion in electrical fire damages. See link below.

You may recall the Maui fire a couple of years ago. Century old high voltage transmission lines, poorly maintained. Water service actually CUT to the adjacent hydrants. Years of neglected brush accumulation. Voila . .. your taxes are going up $4 billion.

Well, you didn’t expect Hawaii’s career politicians to accept any responsibility for this, and pay the damages themselves, did you? In fact, as far as I can tell, not a single one has resigned or faced a recall. Now that’s some chutzpah, eh?

The money is going to the survivors of the Maui fire of course. And they need it. It will be a decade – at least – before rebuilding is complete. And when it finally is, the plan is to convert the Maui economy to something other than a travel destination. What that will be is uncertain. But Maui 2.0 is unlikely to be as lucrative for residents, who face the nation's highest taxes, gasoline costs, grocery costs . . . and electricity rates.

To be fair, only 5 of the guilty parties are Hawaiian government related: The state itself; the county; the local school district; the monopoly electric company; and the monopoly phone company. Bizarrely, the water company which turned off the hydrants is not included in the settlement. The two private companies pleading guilty are Charter Cable and a local real estate company.

I suspect $4 billion isn’t going to be enough to replace all the buildings, purchase new cars and boats, restore the land, put in new electric, cable, and phone service, repave the roads, clean the beaches . . . well, there’s a LOT to do. But if the victims hadn’t accepted the $4 billion deal, they could have waited years – decades – for the courts to decide their cases. And their taxes would still be going up, and Maui would still be a tourist anathema.

In era where FDIC governors can head up banks which fail, and congress passes spending bills resulting in a $35 trillion federal debt, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that Hawaii’s politicians also duck responsibility for bad governance. If the courts can’t save us, then we need to save ourselves at the voting booth.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

~Plaintiffs in Maui wildfire case reach $4 billion settlement against Hawaiian Electric and others (yahoo.com)~

LeopoldBloom · M

Are you suggesting that we stop issuing judgments against government bodies? While taxes could go up to cover this, that simply amounts to a redistribution of weath. That's all government is, anyway, along with acting as an organizing principle. The government paid for the interstate highway system, which could have been described as nothing more than an excuse to raise taxes - unless you also take into account the benefit that highway system provided. Ideally, government spending is just people pooling their resources to create projects they couldn't build on their own.

It's reasonable to ask why the century-old transmission lines weren't maintained, or why brush wasn't cleared. Well, that costs money, and unless people are willing to pay for preventive maintenance now, they will have to pay for repairs and reconstruction later. Someone made the decision to charge less for utilities while deferring maintenance. A similar decision was made in Texas, where electricity rates were kept low by not bringing the grid up to the national standard, which would have allowed it to connect to either one of the other two national grids. This was great until the storm hit and the Texas grid went down, and the utility was unable to purchase power from elsewhere. You get what you pay for.

What would you suggest the people of Maui do instead? Presumably, many of these people have fire insurance, but that's not going to cover the cost of rebuilding the collective infrastructure. Maybe they should go back to fishing and living in huts, and we can grant them their independence. As Israel Kamakawiwo'ole said, Liliu'okalani was the last Queen of Hawai'i "up to now."

LeopoldBloom · M

@SusanInFlorida While the US government spends more than any other country in raw numbers, by percent of GDP, we're number 7, after Ukraine, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Israel, and Poland.

The problem isn't spending per se, but waste, which is a lot harder to measure. If a contractor is paid to do nothing, their employees spend their paychecks anyway, so some of that money ends up in the economy. So it's not necessarily as bad as it looks if you take the externalities into account.

Like most countries, the US has a mixed capitalist/socialist economy, with the government handling sectors like national defense and law enforcement, while private industry handles others. Cutting government spending beyond a certain point would plunge us into a recession. The key is figuring out which sector should be public and which private. Most people would agree that the military should be in the public sector, while garment manufacturing should be private. Arguments over whether we should have public schools are driven more by political and cultural agendas than rational analysis over which one, or what combination, is most beneficial in achieving the goals we have in mind. We're not even in agreement over what the goal of education should be.

As for lobbying, if it wouldn't violate the first amendment, I would severely restrict it while correspondingly expanding congressional research staff.

Edit: The figures above are just defense spending. In the US, that's half of discretionary spending. I'll have to look for the percentages for total spending. However, the only meaningful total is percent of GDP or comparison to private sector spending.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@LeopoldBloom i'm old school. I figure more than half of inflation is driven by "waste, fraud, and abuse"