03-06-2026, 05:39 PM (This post was last modified: 03-07-2026, 06:18 PM by ironyak.)
HJ - Now, while assuming and not stating this verbatim as fact, but I assume the quote came from what his AI of choice gave him
Back in the day, when I'd hit up the old Waiakea Theatre Tri-Plex and catch The Terminator before shoving a handful of those slotted tokens into Robotron next door in a desperate attempt to save the last humans from wave after wave of automatons, I always thought the future wars against Artificial Intelligence would be epic. Instead we've ended up with humans willingly enthralled to the AIs acting as keyboard cultists slinging slugs of auto-generated text back and forth online in some form of memetic warfare.
Who needs a pantheon of gods, when people are desperately lining up at the gates of the Billionaire Cults of Musk, Bezos, Srinivas, Ricketts, and more locally, Omidyar and (to the textual origin question at hand) Hughes, so they can prostrate and devote their lives to propagating their patron's agenda online and helping infect new converts.
If the local multi-property-owning-840/70000=1% continue to thwart the demands of those akamai kids from back in Zuccotti Park, we might all end up living in shipping containers (if you can even afford the random tariff fees), and slinging our decks to jack-in to cyberspace while the real world decays around us. What's a neuromancing console cowboy / street samurai got to do to fight the mind viruses along with the lungworms and feral fat cats? TLDR: For those not into cyber nor punk, leilanidude's mysterious source for his text is this article from Aloha State Daily tied to Wyoming billionaire Bradley Wayne Hughes Jr. with a MediaBias/FactCheck score of Right-Center & MIXED Factual: "In conclusion, the Aloha State News is an imposter site, lacks transparency, and publishes false information. As a result, we rate them right-center, biased, and Questionable."
As a follow-on, County Council gathered public input yesterday on the new property tax arrangements, with higher taxes on more expensive properties and lower taxes on owner-occupied homes and affordable rental housing. There's even a new "long-term rental" rate so that those second-home-owners actually concerned with providing a rentals can do so at a reduced tax rate.
This County Council seems to be doing more than usual to look out for locals - hopefully the next one can follow up and continue the good work.
https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/202...rty-rates/
"The Hawaii County Council held a public hearing Tuesday seeking feedback on plans to raise property tax rates for nonresidents and owners of second homes in a push to make up for an estimated $15 million budget shortfall.
At the same time, many island residents would see a reduction in their property taxes. Under the proposed adjustments, the vast majority of owner-occupied homes and affordable rental housing would enjoy a 20-cent reduction — or just over 3% — in tax rates, falling from $5.95 to $5.75 per $1,000 of taxable value.
This is an intentional tailoring of rates by council members to benefit locals, whom many county officials including Mayor Kimo Alameda have admitted are languishing under an accelerating cost of living and housing affordability crisis.
...
Another new property class created this year would be “long-term rental,” set at a rate of $7.75 per $1,000 of taxable value, which council members have justified as an incentive to encourage second-home-owners to rent their properties to residents at reasonable rates." (more at link)
Another new property class created this year would be “long-term rental,” set at a rate of $7.75 per $1,000 of taxable value, which council members have justified as an incentive to encourage second-home-owners to rent their properties to residents at reasonable rates."
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If they really wanted to encourage more long-term rentals, they would drop that rate further AND do a re-write of the landlord/tenant laws to stop favoring abusive tenants.
Fun fact: The Hawaii County Sheriff's department refuses to do evictions. You have to hire Maui County Sheriff deputies, pay for their flight, hotel, meals, transportation, etc. to do an eviction.
05-22-2026, 03:49 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2026, 05:05 PM by HiloJulie.)
Fun fact: The Hawaii County Sheriff's department refuses to do evictions. You have to hire Maui County Sheriff deputies, pay for their flight, hotel, meals, transportation, etc. to do an eviction.
The Sheriff's Department in Hawaii is a STATE only operation. Each County does NOT have its own Sheriff Department.
While saying Hawaii County Sheriff and Maui County Sheriff may seem like "fun" to you, it's hardly anything fact based.
It is a fact that the Hawaii County Sheriffs will not due evictions. Period. Splitting hairs about ownership of the department is not worth your attempt at yet another argument.
05-22-2026, 04:23 PM (This post was last modified: 05-22-2026, 05:04 PM by HiloJulie.)
(05-22-2026, 04:15 PM)leilanidude Wrote: It is a fact that the Hawaii County Sheriffs will not due evictions. Period. Splitting hairs about ownership of the department is not worth your attempt at yet another argument.
No hair splitting here at all. The simple fact is that the State of Hawaii "owns" the Sheriff's Department. There is NO such thing as a separate Sheriff's Department for each County.
There is NO such thing as a separate Sherriff's Department for each County.
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You are still splitting hairs. How about, the sheriff's based in Hawaii County refuse to do evictions. That make your blue hair feel better?
(05-22-2026, 04:30 PM)leilanidude Wrote: There is NO such thing as a separate Sherriff's Department for each County.
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You are still splitting hairs. How about, the sheriff's based in Hawaii County refuse to do evictions. That make your blue hair feel better?
Again, not splitting hairs at all and besides, I have purple hair, remember?
Fun fact: The Hawaii County Sheriff's department refuses to do evictions.
Because our local Hawaii Island sheriffs would have to give up the extra bedroom in their house for nieces, nephews, and their significantly-short-on-cash others that they evict? We recently had a squatter in the neighborhood who was arrested multiple times, but continued to return. In conversation with one neighbor the squatter laughed and said nothing would happen to him because two of his sons were policemen. I did a quick search and at least one son was publicly awarded for his service.
Maybe our neighborhood should offer that officer a trophy if he takes in his dad? Win-win?
05-23-2026, 06:13 AM (This post was last modified: 05-23-2026, 06:14 AM by terracore.)
When I was a renter in Oregon I could get a miniscule portion of my rent refunded when filing my state income taxes. As the state government and associated waste grew they kept raising property taxes and would you believe it.... the landlords passed those costs onto the renters!
Rather than fixing the problem by giving a few thousand landlords lower property tax rates for long term rental properties, the state instead decided to refund some of that property tax revenue directly to the renters by creating a burdensome tax code and new layers of bureaucracy to process and audit hundreds of thousands of renters filing this addition to their income taxes. Of course this didn't help the undocumented or people who otherwise didn't file income taxes.
They wouldn’t need to create this complicated system or expand an expensive, bloated bureaucracy if they simply gave rental property owners a tax break instead.
So the answer to the higher cost of a growing government was to grow the government. I can totally see Hawaii following this concept. In fact I'm surprised they haven't already. People would see that miniscule adjustment on their tax form and think, "our politicians are doing something!" when in reality all of the money disappeared into the bureaucracy so the "refund" really came from raising their landlord's taxes even more, which the renter pays.
