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By: p.r.

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Scene I.

It was Cayetano who brought in the hotshot system prez in 2000. Remember that Cayetano wanted to build all sorts of things (convention center, oceanarium, art museum), but the money just wasn’t there. Facing budget deficits, when he had to make a decision on how to spend the money, he began to publicly state how hard it is finding good management talent in government, and how top salaries needed to expand to draw in the talent. This logic was then at work in the hiring of the new system prez, who was supposedly an expert in community transformation and urban planning.

Scene II.

But then something else happened in the population. This hiring seemed to trigger some latent memory of corporate propaganda from the 1980s regarding the myth of the high-flying CEO ‘turn-around artist’. So, even though the hiring of this system prez was intially a big surprise, even shock, this turned into excitement (and dread, among the status quo) that we can shake things up if we bring in big shots.

Scene III.

This system prez originally stated that he wanted to focus on using the university to transform the public education system in order to create a college-ready population. But within a few months he was literally told by the educational bureaucracy and politicians that they have no intention whatsoever of changing anything, and that he would have to mind his own business. So this system prez then started trumpeting building a ‘world-class university’ on an ever-shrinking budget — precisely what his predecessor, Mortimer, was criticized for doing. (In fact, Mortimer was/is an internationally recognized expert on downsizing universities, which he was hired to do initially, but which he then seemed to forget.)

Scene IV.

The system prez began to hire at huge cost a team of old friends who specialize in public relations. But their performance was less than stellar (e.g., the fiasco of creating a new logo, when they submitted a design that looked like an even worse version of HPUs logo). He was then told after two years in office by politicians that they want him gone. So he hired a politically connected local as a ‘chief-of-staff’ (?) at a huge salary to do much of his job, and then boosted the pay of other administrators to also do more of his job, and then he toured the US looking for another job.

Scene VI.

The local political elite began to play his game. For example, the head of public education in Hawaii at that time had her salary doubled, without any corresponding doubling of her abilities.

Scene VII.

He got rich and left. Others at the UH and in the local power structure are getting rich.

Meanwhile, Hawaii’s economy seems to continue to follow the pattern of collapsing every five years, with each subsequent collapse worse than the preceding one. The society is getting poorer.


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