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Roth and guest Chuck Freedman, Vice President of Hawaiian Electric Company, open 1995 by reviewing the previous year and making predictions on New Year's Day. Freedman calls 1994 the year of citizen action, citing Pop 94 and the Live Aloha movement, and proposes calling 1995 the "year of paradox": Hawaii remains heavily Democratic while the mainland has swung Republican, and the state faces growth pressures that make its beloved livability harder to sustain. Roth notes that Governor Cayetano and budget director Earl Anzai have signaled an end to the "warm body policy" — Hawaii's long-standing practice of not firing government employees — and Roth and Freedman debate whether the legislature and public will accept the human cost of actual cuts. The pair name Hawaiian sovereignty, same-sex marriage, and population density as the year's sharpest tolerance tests, with Freedman arguing that non-Hawaiians owe it to themselves to understand sovereignty issues rather than simply react to them. Callers raise New Year's fireworks noise and fire hazards as a case study in the paradox of personal freedom versus community protection, the stalled Kalanianaole Highway completion, and the promise of macadamia farming as agricultural diversification.
Transcript
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Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
