Mostly Politics

Like Film Noir At The Legislature

Dan Boylan — 2012-01-25T10:00:38+00:00

It was, as it was a year ago, film noir at last week’s opening of the 2012 state legislative session: No music, no dancing, few flowers, sobriety everywhere. The residents of the so-called “People’s House” were in high re-election-year mode: all business, levity at a minimum.

Of Bread And Political Circuses

Dan Boylan — 2012-01-18T10:00:47+00:00

“Give them bread and circuses and they’ll never revolt,” wrote the poet Juvenal as he watched the once exemplary Roman Republic decline into a dictatorship.

A Lesson In Political Mandates

Dan Boylan — 2012-01-11T10:00:25+00:00

Back in the day, when I was a mere stripling studying political science, my professors talked endlessly about mandates.

A Blustery Time For The President

Dan Boylan — 2012-01-04T10:00:15+00:00

Ill winds blow when the Obamas come to down: “blustery,” the weather people call it “with “splashes” of rain here and “splashes” of rain there in the words of weatherman extraordinaire Guy Hagi. Since their first presidential Christmas visit in 2008, Barack, Michelle and the girls have known downpours as well, and three years ago sufficient bluster to cause an islandwide power outage that had the Secret Service scrambling.

Good Riddance To 2011 Politics

Dan Boylan — 2011-12-28T01:08:39+00:00

The ghosts of new years past can haunt us every bit as much of those of Christmases past. Consider those of 2011:

Spreading The Yuletide Cheer

Dan Boylan — 2011-12-21T10:00:05+00:00

Christmas festivities begin at the Boylan household with the arrival of the Christmas tree. Wife Gloria (aka the high-strung Filipina) picked out a 6to 7-foot tree this year. She claims that that’s the height she buys every year, but this one looks shorter to me.

McMackin’s Millions; Guv’s Woes

Dan Boylan — 2011-12-14T10:00:09+00:00

The operative analogy this final month of 2011 comes to us, as it usually does in December, from the world of football. It’s about quarters, and it applies to both a coach and a governor.

The Global Financial Collapse

Dan Boylan — 2011-12-07T10:00:51+00:00

In his new book, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (W.W. Norton, $25.95), Michael Lewis tells further tales of the 2007 global financial collapse. Lewis explored its root cause Wall Streets’ bundling, securitizing and sale of bad to atrocious mortgages two years ago in The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. In Boomerang he travels to Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany and California to examine the damage.

Peace Corps Reunion’s Significance

Dan Boylan — 2011-11-30T10:00:36+00:00

In the fall of 1963, three groups of young people were at the Peace Corps training Center in Hilo, Hawaii. All but a few were college graduates, some held graduate degrees. They were overwhelmingly white and middle class, and to one degree or another idealism motivated them all.

How Not To Direct APEC Traffic

Dan Boylan — 2011-11-23T10:00:09+00:00

An old friend, an esteemed member of the local Bar, invited my wife and me to sit at his law firm’s table at a dinner honoring Philippines President Benigno Aquino. It was to be held in the Tapa Room of the Hilton Hawaiian Village Sunday, Nov. 13, APEC’s last official day.