TrueLife - Gary Cordery - The Future of Hawaii

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

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Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Heirous through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. We are here with the candidate for governor. Gary, would you like to introduce yourself for the people who may, I don't know who's out there who doesn't know you, But for those two people that might be, could you introduce yourself?

George, thank you. That's awesome. George, for your viewing audience, my name is Gary Cordery, running for governor here in Hawaii. I'm super grateful to be on this morning, George. And what I love about it is just authentic and we're just having a conversation that the viewers get to sit in home run. So grateful for that. And I don't know if there's a way they can provide feedback or connect. You can obviously go to our campaign website, Gary Cordy for Governor,

shameless plug to reach out and be more than happy to further discuss whatever we discuss or other things. So anyway, that's an open invitation. Standing open invitation for the people. What a concept. Yeah, you heard that everybody. He's out there. He needs taking questions and he's doing his best and he's been on the campaign trail now for how long has it been? It's been about six weeks now.

five or six weeks. You know, things are a blur, George, and I don't really pay attention too much about what happened in the last couple of days, let alone six weeks ago. You know, we're clearly committed about what we're trying to accomplish or what we are accomplishing. And in that light, that's where my focus is. And I'll continue to go there. Do you think, let me ask you this. I'm sure since you've made this decision and you've been on the trail that things have been moving rather fastly. And do you think that that is the pace at which being a governor will continue once you were to move into the governorship? Would it stay at this pace? Or how do you expect that to play out? You know, originally, early on in the campaign, I started thinking about rhythm and

what it meant to run this race because not only running a race, but it's only until November. Governing is a four-year commitment. Getting a pace and a rhythm, I think, is important in life. you know, you have to have, you know, rest and sleep and good eating habits and exercise. Those are all the components of, you know, being wise. So those have to be set aside. They almost have to be scheduled in at this point. You know, you don't think if the schedule is time to sleep, but that's how it is. I think inevitably, you don't control the circumstances that show up.

You get a new day every day, but you do not know what's going to happen that day. So, you know, leading means understanding that you have to stand at certain times and you don't rest. And there's other times when you can, you can have those times of rest and time with your family and with your wife. And those are exceedingly important, quiet times, times of prayer. These elements, you cannot be overlooked. They are foundational. Without those being in place, then you're headed for, you know, I have this phrase, the tyranny of the urgent, and you're running, you're running, you know, even as I miss appointments,

I do disappointments, as you will know. And that reflects a breakdown in a number of. of areas. And so you have to avoid those as much as possible. Yeah, it's, I like that phrase. The tyranny of urgency. Is that how it goes? Tyranny of the urgent. Tyranny of the urgent. That's true. It's a, it puts things in perspective, well done. Well, I was for most people. It'll get you. You're always thinking, oh my gosh, I'm five minutes late because actually, you haven't actually disciplined yourself and created space to leave your house on time. So, you're always, you're always thinking, you're hoping for a green light at every intersection. Maybe this is just true for me,

but that's not the way to live. That's not right. Yeah, and it seems once you begin going down that path, it's very difficult to get back on the path. You know, once you become somewhat familiarized with running behind schedule, it's a shame that it almost becomes part of who you are. You know, one of the things I think most important, George, is understanding promise. So, you know, your word is your promise. And one of the, actually a foundational piece in a relationship is if I tell you, I'm going to be there at 5.30, or I tell my wife, I'll be home at 530 and she's making dinner and I roll in at 545 and, you know, dinner's getting cold. She's worked hard. She's given herself. And I don't even account for that. I don't even negotiate or even call her. Honey, I'm on my way home. I'm going to be 15 minutes late.

That's a piece in relationship. That's Ratch Relationship 101. That must be established. And from there, you can govern your life. Yeah, I agree. I think it's important. When I was younger, my dad used to say, there's two things a man has, his word and his credit. You know, and if, you know,

it's true, those are kind of the same things. And if you have your freedom and your health and your word and your credit, you pretty much have everything. Yeah. I never thought about the credit piece, but your word for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And, you know, I was listening to the Rogan interview with BJ Penn, and he had brought up, Like the Jones Act, and it got me thinking about that. What's your take on the Jones Act? You know, the Jones Act at this point in time really needs to be repealed. People may or may not know this, but goods and services coming from the East cannot come directly to Hawaii.

By law, by maritime, by U.S. law, these cargo ships have to go directly to the U.S. mainland and be reflagged under a U.S. flagged ship. And this process also must be completed by U.S. owned companies and U.S. 75% U.S. residents. So the cost to reflag a ship and then send it back to Hawaii adds about 25 to 30% of everything that's imported to Hawaii. So there was a time when this was important in wartime, you know, I think it was back in the 20s and it was established. but in this current global environment where these dynamics are no longer applicable, the idea that we're going to continue to do this at the cost of Hawaii's economy is a big deal. You know, we have such an economic struggle here. We have such a high cost of living.

If we took even just 20%, if you took 20% off the top of everything that was purchased here in Hawaii, it would make a great deal of difference for the people in Hawaii. Now, the Longshoremen and these maritime industry employees, these unionized employees, they protect this act. It ensures them, you know, high paying jobs. I assert that we just renegotiate these contracts. So these people don't live in fear. I'm going to lose my job. You know, the global economy is going to snatch my income, you know, going to hurt my family.

We renegotiate those conversations and then we release the people from the burden. This is a foundational piece to lower the. the cost of living in Hawaii. Yeah, it's, it seems like one of those things that, you know, it's so difficult to live here already with housing and food and just something that definitely should be looked into. And I like the idea of renegotiating it. It sounds like it could be something beneficial for everybody. Well, you see, you see industry, you know, we talked about this last time that that constraints

and corruption are not just about getting things, but they're also about restricting things, restrict access. You have all kinds of industries that are trying to protect their income stream across the board, not just in Hawaii, but globally. And so when these industries feel their income stream is threatened, they push back out of sheer fear as though there's not enough, as though God is not enough, that his abundance is not enough for everybody. It is. And this is the paradigm shift that people need to make in their minds. You need to understand that there's a better way that everybody can share in the abundance, that we don't have to suffer. When you think about building the house, think about a house package, 400, 400,000 for materials, just take that off alone, 20%.

That's a big number. Develop the costs, food costs, goods and services, toothpaste, cars, clothing, food, all of it. it's all burdened by 20 to 25 to some cases, 30% additional cost because of the Jones Act. Some people want to modify it. I don't understand that thinking. I've looked at it. I don't really understand what would we be saving. Basically modify it means maintain the stevedore's income stream. And I love the stevedores.

I have friends that are in the stevedore. I have a suggestion that we threaten industry. What I'm saying is there's a better way. way. Yeah. You know, on a related note, what was it to build in Hawaii per square foot versus what it is today

when you first started? Do you remember? I didn't remember back in the day, you know, in the 80s when people say, how much that cost to build a house a square foot? And I say, ah, 100 bucks for a Chevy. I mean, there's a range, right? You can buy a Chevy, you can buy a Volvo,

you can buy a Lamborghini. Yeah. What a Volvo, right? You could buy a Chevy for $100. You could buy a Volvo for $125, $130. And you could buy a Lamborghini for $200. Nowadays, a Chevy's $275. Wow.

$200, right? Volvo's $300. Lamborghini. You're talking $5, $700 a foot. So people are, you know, you think about these components. They're not, it's not just like the cost of the construction, I mean, materials, the labor, But the underlying costs, the development costs, waiting for permits, dealing with fees, dealing with all these regulations, all of these components drive this cost. So the actual cost of construction is not the cost of construction.

It's the cost of construction plus the government, plus the government burden. That's what's driving up the cost. And the Jones Act, take 25% off right there. Consider that. Yeah. From 100 bucks to 80 bucks. Wow. That's what we're talking about.

Yeah. I'm talking about real numbers. This is not hypotheticals. So anyway, yeah. Yeah, it's good. So what kind of, I was also curious, what role does the governor play? You know, I know that the federal government does the foreign policy, but what type of role does the governor have dealing with countries and officials abroad? Like, what's the role of the governor there?

Well, I think, you know, in Hawaii, Hawaii is strategically located like no other state in our union. We're in the very middle of the ocean, literally almost halfway between the U.S. mainland and Asia. Yeah. So it's geographic location and it's not only its political influence, but its military presence. It makes it unique with regard to all the states. And it's important. So in Hawaii, the governor, he's. he manages the properties, he manages the port authority,

he manages the airport's division, he manages the Hawaii National Guard, and he must be on a regular basis, I would just rephrase that, I will be on a regular basis in communication with the various commanders and generals and admirals on these bases so that we're working together and so that the state of Hawaii would understand

the mission of the federal government and with regard to military. It is the visible piece of foreign policy, with regard to financial things and we should be having here in Hawaii, we don't, but we should be a technology leader. We should have industry here. You know, we should have big tech here because of our location and the time zones. We're perfectly suited to be an intermediary between Asia and the U.S. mainland because of our time zone.

That we don't have industry like that here. It's unbelievable. that we don't have that. You know, we have an antiquated, you know, information systems here that barely function, let alone have a viable high-tech industry. So we need to go there. And it will lead. I can assure you, as Hawaii raises its bar, its technology bar, it will become more influential.

It will be more important, and it will allow Hawaii's people to go to school, get a degree, and stay here and earn a high-paying living. So that's the problem. We have no industry. So, you know, whether it be, whether it be ag or tech, we have none, essentially. Yeah. Have you ever thought, like, sometimes I think to myself, you know, there's other island nations or there's, like, when I think about Singapore, I think about what makes them so successful and what are they doing that maybe we could do in Hawaii. There's some things I don't like.

I don't think you were really allowed to own property in Singapore forever. you know, they are doing some things there that we could be doing here, like having industry, like being friendly to the business of the future, be it future medicine or technology or what do you think about when you think about Singapore and Hawaii? You know, to be honest with you, George, I'm not really familiar with Singapore, how their economy runs. I do know that Singapore and other Asian states don't own their, don't own their, they don't have, they don't have property ownership.

Yeah. They do have governments that are pro-business. Yeah. They do incentivize business there so that they can be, so that they can be profitable. That we don't do that here is a problem. Not that we don't incentivize business, but we don't incentivize a new startup business. We don't incentivize ag business, technology business. You know, so that we don't have a business-friendly client.

in Hawaii is a problem. You know, it's been stated, you know, nationally on the national news. And it's been rated, Hawaii's been rated one of the most unfriendly business states in the nation. So that's a reflection of what's prioritizing. What's the priority here? The priority here is tourism. It's not, it's not small business.

And until that changes, we'll continue to struggle. Do you think that the tour, the lobby for tourism has something to do with, with Hawaii being not friendly to business? I think that Hawaii has such a focus on the tourism dollar. You know, we have Hawaii Tourism Authority. Right. It has a strategic plan. It's from 21, 25.

It's strategic plan. When you read through the plan, you'll see it has, 25 stakeholders that have been participating in developing strategies. And then they give a two days, a visual seminar for the people. two days for feedback as a stakeholder. So what you see is a government that has a focus on one industry without the input of the people.

And so now you have the pushback of the people. People saying, hey, what about this? How come I can't go to the beach? How come I can't park? These kinds of things. So the tourism authority looks at tourism as a resource. And obviously, it's a part of the component. But Hawaii used to be a state where people would come here with their families and actually go on vacation.

Yeah. Yeah. That we've that we promoted Hawaii as a family tourist destination. It's changing. We have political, we have political considerations about raising the cost of coming to Hawaii in such a way that they're actually having a conversation about, well, we want to price out and get the right tourist. These kinds of thought processes I don't agree with. I believe Hawaii should be an invitation and a spirit of Aloha should be an invitation for people for family. to come here and that we don't have to work so hard to generate a high-paying tourists.

We should have a tourist that comes here and understands Aloha, understands what it means to fit into the culture here, and embrace them. So I'm very, I'm perplexed about the way that policies are generated without really a thoughtful consideration in particular. The neighbor islands have a say. Everything has become Oahu-centric. and the neighbor islands basically get the scraps the scraps on the thought process the scraps in the participation and development process the scraps in resources and funding to under to underwrite

establishes process so without their ongoing uh full participation we'll struggle we'll we'll struggle with diversity we'll struggle with getting along yeah that's That brings me to another question. Like, you know, I often hear people say words like diversity, and it's a buzzword that we all, whether you listen to the radio or the news or your school or business places, let me ask you this question. What do you think is the difference between inequality and diversity? Inequality and diversity.

You know, I think we celebrate diversity and culture. Yeah. This is something that we should celebrate. You know, the fact that we have unique people, with unique passions, you know, places that they are from, that we would celebrate that. Inequality, on their hand, when you talk about it in the context of, let's say, education or hiring or funding, the idea that one group of people is going to decide

what is equal and unequal, right? And that we were going to somehow, through social policy, policy, create equality. Yeah. I think it's a big mistake. I think that our processes should be merit-based. We should have people who are put in positions based on their ability and their strengths, right? And so we don't have that now.

We find universities having enrollment protocols or enrollment levels that are based on race. These kinds of thoughts, these kinds, like we have these woe things going through our communities where the American flag is now racist. This is a, about equality, the idea that they're going to use terminology to create equality. When you know, when you think about it, though, you're worthy of respect and so is your neighbor.

Yeah. Period. That should be the equality piece. You know, not how, not, not what percentage of, of white guys or Japanese guys or whatever, Filipino guys are in a, or in a business as an example, within sitting in an executive board. You know, is it equally blended? It shouldn't be that way. It should be those who have strived to do what's right, learned, worked hard, and get rewarded for their hard work. Yeah.

I often wonder why the language of equality and equity is so divisive. You know, it's so strange to me that the language patterns we use to bring ourselves together tend to divide us sometimes. I wish that we had a better way to figure that out, which kind of brings me to this idea of censorship that happens all around the world. What's your take on the idea of censorship in general and the idea of mandates as censorship? What do you think about those things? Censorship. You know, I think our current president, Mr. Biden, just started a whole new truth campaign, a truth judge.

I don't recall the name of what they're trying to implement right now, but it's censorship. Don't kid yourself. The idea that one man is going to censure another man's thought and speech is against our constitution. It stifles the unique gift of who people are. It stifles ingenuity. It stifles imagination. It actually constrains everything that's beautiful about a human being.

So I'm absolutely opposed to censorship in any form. you know so you know this is the massive struggle that we've you know that we're having in society big tech facebook twitter some some people are allowed to say certain things others are not who's decide who's to decide this either you have a platform where people are free or don't declare it this is what we're about you want to you want to hear this this uh this perspective and we're going to run everything through this lens then be with us on this platform or don't But don't say that we have free speech when you don't. Censorship is wrong.

You've seen it in the pandemic. You've seen doctors, scientists across the board be censored because they have a voice. And their voice is censored because there's a motive behind the censorship. This is inherently the problem. The fact that we have big pharma and the CDC and other FDA pharmaceutical companies censoring doctors saying, you must take this shot, right? It's not a vaccine. I'm speaking about the COVID vaccine.

I'll be clear about this. The idea that these pharmaceuticals and these big government agencies and media all collaborate together and say you can do this, but you can't talk about it. That's censorship. That's what keeps people from getting well.

So you have, these are global conversations. So these folks must account for this behavior. and it is not acceptable in a free society. We're not common as China, but we're behaving like it. Yeah, it's interesting. On Friday, I'm going to speak with a lawyer from New York who is, she is suing the government because they are utilizing an agency, sort of like the health, sort of like their state version of the CDC

or their health agency to use the police to take people to, you know, to the hospital or take them to certain quarantine areas if they're sick. And they didn't pass it through legislation, but the governor has mandated this agency to have the power to do. So not that they're doing it, but they have the power to do it. It's also happening in Washington. And it seems to me, Hawaii sometimes seems to be down the road from New York and California and stuff like that.

So look, do you think that the mandates are kind of a slippery slope or something like that could happen. If they can use the mandates to push our attention one way for social change, what would stop them from taking another step forward to do something else? Well, I think we've, I think, you know, we've seen that, I've saw that at the beginning and been talking about it for a while, that the mandates and the vaccine and all this information gathering by our political leaders, it's really a platform. It's a platform to track people to actually create the have and the have-nots. Now, this is, people think this is crazy, but you see it happen all over the world. world. And you're right. Hawaii follows New York. It follows California. It follows other very progressive

liberal states because it thinks the same way. It actually, Hawaii's political leadership actually think they know best rather than given the authority for people to live and breathe in freedom and in liberty to exercise their own conscience about what should happen in their lives. So the mandates and executive orders are wrong. I can tell you as governor, they will not stand. The idea that the governor can continually every 60 days roll over an emergency mandate is a problem. I don't recall the exact information, but it's, I think it came to my attention maybe three, four months ago that the governor actually made a request for his own another facet of police enforcement, not the sheriff's department, not HPD, but something directed by the governor's office.

Now, I'm not trying to start something. I just heard this. I don't know if it's so, but it is exactly the representation of what you're describing. Even the fact that in Hawaii, on Oahu, the sheriff's department in Hawaii is not elected. This is a big problem. In every other state, we have an elective sheriff, not in Hawaii. The sheriff's department is at the service and the call of the governor. So when you think about that, this is a major problem. The sheriff's department should stand autonomously in our communities for the people to protect the rights and the liberties and the Constitution of the people. It swears an oath that way, but it doesn't operate that way.

So, you know, these are the kinds of changes that need to happen. I will lead the charge that we will have an elective sheriff in Hawaii. This needs to happen. We brought, you know, I'm digressing a moment, but we brought Sheriff Mack here, a constitutional sheriff, and asked and tried to set up meetings with government officials here. They just dismissed them out right. They wouldn't even consider

the advantages of an elective sheriff. Why? Good question. May I say censorship? Yeah. As a possible answer, I think it's true. Yeah, and I think maybe they feel they'd be committing political suicide. They wouldn't be paying the piper to move up.

And when you won't listen to the other side, you can't solve any problems. You know, and I don't understand why they, I guess I do understand why they wouldn't want to talk. But yeah, it's it's mind-blowing to me to see the political stagnation and just the way it is. What do you think about demographics? I know that we have an aging population here on different islands. It's a little bit different. What can you say about demographics here in Hawaii? Well, you know, birth rates, demographics, populations moving.

Hawaii is only one of two states with a declining population. So who's leaving? The people who leave have the resources to leave. These are business people. These are families that functions. These are, you know, maybe they're running, maybe they have two and a half jobs. Nevertheless, the people that are leaving, I think it was 13, 14,000 last year left Hawaii. This 13 and 14,000 people who have left Hawaii, they are the tax base.

They are the people who are generating resources. So when you think about it, you have an aging population. on a fixed income, receiving social benefits to get by, right? They're pressed on every side financially. The state continues to raise taxes. It has to because you have a declining population, and the population that is leaving actually generates the tax base. So what does the state do?

The state refocuses its energy and its focus on tourism to provide for the resources at the expense of the people. So you have a declining population, you have a ballooning government, you have a refocus on tourism, which is, again, the people are not for. So demographics are exceedingly important. We should create policies as a state that enhances families that provides for opportunities and incentives for business to stay here, not to leave. My own kids left, my own two daughters, their husbands, my seven grandkids. They saw it. They saw the writing.

unsustainable. They left. They're indicative of exactly the conversations that are going on. The fact that they had to leave, these were young men who had high-paying jobs. One owned a property, one was renting, but they're just a snapshot of exactly the demographic consideration that we don't think outside,

that we don't think about, I shouldn't say we, that are officials who are making strategies and tax policies, housing policies, business policies. They don't realize that the consequences of these policies are what are driving people off the island. So, you know, it's an indicator. Demographics is just a way to, it's an indicator of what's going on with regard to public policy. Yeah. You know, I'm sure someone in your position understands the importance of making long-term plans. And last time I spoke to you, I think you were having a team meeting about what things may look like in 2030 or 2050. Can you share some ideas about what came up in that meeting or what you think might be happening in that time frame? Yeah, well, we continue. We're continuing to look carefully at long-term strategies. for sustainability in Hawaii.

You know, we have a lot of conversations about sustainability, but we've yet to see any policies, right? So this is the deal. This is demographics. This is exactly, it's directly related to your previous question. The fact that we don't have desalienization here, every island, except for Kauai, is struggling with water. The fact that we haven't thoughtfully look at,

and so we're looking carefully, I have some very smart guys looking across the globe at scalable desalunization. its implementation and how it fits into existing water system, distribution systems, right? We're working on that. And that's not 2030. That's 2025. This is not, we cannot wait. These systems are there. We don't have to invent the wheel. There's 20 plus thousands of these systems functioning around the world. So we're looking at that. We're looking at energy. So what kind of energy pieces? Everybody's concerned about fossil fuels, but in reality,

Currently, almost all of our energy comes from fossil fuels. Wind is not going to provide what we need. Solar is not going to provide what we need. We're going to need sustainable, clean, long-term, dependable power. So hydrogen, we're looking carefully hydrogen. We have a meeting coming up next week with some people who are very familiar with hydrogen. We're going to look at that carefully and understand how that can be provided to the people on a large scale. It's completely clean.

We're watching closely fusion. Fission is atomic power, nuclear power, fission, the splitting of the atom. But there's fusion. Scientists have been studying for this for about 15 years. How can we create fusion power, the binding of atoms? This is what the sun does. This is what solar, you know,

it takes a great deal of energy, but they're going to figure this out. Right. And once they do, we'll have energy, forever. Yeah. But that we wouldn't participate in the conversation and start getting smart about it and start changing our considerations and our thought processes towards long-term sustainable clean energy.

These are basics. You know, we need to ag, dairy, poultry, beef, produce. These kinds of industries should dominate our landscape. That we don't make space for that. utilizing existing DLNR, zoning, technology, incentives, transportation? Yes. The answer is yes. We're having these conversations across the board.

Many we can implement now. Many are in the process of making decisions now. Others, they're a bit down the road, but you cannot ignore any of them. Yeah. Have you, does your campaign plan on meeting with like, say, Raytheon or some of the big defense contractors? It seems to me that the military spending we use now for, you know, be a weapon system or something like that, there's no reason why that contract couldn't be used to employ something like, you know, fusion or even some sort of thorium reactor.

And like that could be a government, we pay government subsidies anyway. These contractors are amazing. Why not get them on the energy gain? That's exactly right. You know, that's really wise, George. You know, I've been talking to a gentleman. We were going to talk to the commander of the coastward recently because we're looking at our water. our international waters industry.

You know, how come we have, you know, Chinese fishing vessels right off our shore, you know, consuming all of our wealth. And yet these are supposed to be waters that are that are a part of the Hawaiian, you know, land or under that umbrella. So we should definitely do that. I mean, we have nuclear reactors parked in, you know, Pearl Harbor on a regular basis.

Yeah. Yeah. That we don't think about this. I mean, you know, when you speak about nuclear in Hawaii, people are like, no way. Nuclear reactors, they, all of these components, all energy, current, all current energy have a positive and a negative. That we don't actually have a thoughtful consideration and evaluate, you know, the positives and the negatives on all aspects of energy is short-sighted at best.

There should be thoughtful people evaluating what's going on globally, and we should adapt global energy policies that make sense in Hawaii. Period. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. This technology is out there. To be honest with you, I had never thought about meeting with the defense contractor. I love that idea. I made a vote of it. Yeah, please do. Yeah, absolutely. You should get them to compete. You should call all those guys. Hey, come down here. I want you to meet with me. I have an idea and I want, I don't know which one of you guys is the best, but I want to find out because I think we should work together. And like, you know, It turns everything on its head.

Like right now, it's us against these military countries. It doesn't have to be that way. We're all Americans. Hey, let's work together. You can even have kids come from UH and help employ these new technology. They have a grant or a scholarship program. And, you know, we have all the people here. There's no reason why we shouldn't be working together with them.

They probably love it. You know what I mean? They would love it. And it's really about consensus. It's about enrolling people in a vision for a better future. Right. You have what you mentioned earlier. You have diversity policies who push diverse opinions, but not a collaborative one.

Right. I was at a sustainability conference at UH a couple of weeks ago. And I just looked out across this group of young people, UH students, and I thought, wow, the potential in this room could transform everything if they had the freedom to think outside the box, rather than be agenda driven. You know, I don't know about, to be honest with you, George, I don't know about trying to meet with Raytheon in the middle of running the campaign. Yeah, you're right. I can tell you as governor, this is a no player.

This is like an absolute priority. I mean, the government has to work with military and we're getting ready to renegotiate all the lands of the government, I mean, that the federal government utilizes for military facilities in Hawaii. This does not need to be leveraged. This is one thing we, you know, the people think, oh, we should leverage them because of this, X, Y, and Z. No, you create consensus.

You create unity and you create a vision. that people go, yes, that's right. This is a win-win. It's not a win-lose or a lose-lose. It's a win-win. It is. And so I can tell you, you know, when the time comes in January, you know, then we definitely, there'll be a, you know, there'll be a part of our administration who manages long-term energy

and how we're going to move forward as a society. I'm studying this. There are other states who have formulated energy policy. As an example, Alaska, the Alaskan Energy Authority. This was an authority that was established by the governor outside the normal protocol of energy overview of the state. That gave him the freedom to have these conversations, and the Alaskan Energy Authority was established, and now that Alaskan Energy Authority is a public-private partnership that provides energy for the people of Alaska. This is this strategy, this thinking can be brought here and we're working hard on it.

These are conversations that we are working on. Yeah. Sometimes I get nervous about the public-private partnership. You know, sometimes I fear the privatized profits and socialized loss is like, you know, sometimes I feel like it opens the door for companies to come in, underbid everything, and then just walk away. Oh, looks like we didn't make it. You know what?

That depends on the motor. There's checks and balances for that. It depends on the motivation. If you're using tax credits as a part of public-private partnership, then you're inviting corruption. If you have a public-private partnership that says, we'll work this together and you can run it as an organization for-profit, a benefit for this corporation is for-profit,

and we're all clear about that piece. And once it's done and how they manage their profitability piece, that's up to them. This is capitalism. If on the other hand, we're making agreements with corporations and developers based on tax credits that will have a sunset date. It's just something that it's we cannot explain it now. But the idea that we're going to enter in a public-private partnerships where after a number of years, the public piece is no longer a component, that's a problem. So because that what it does is it means that companies talk to legislators and,

and boards to get special deals because they know full well that if they enroll them now, the abundance comes in 10 or 15 years. And so that is a different conversation. I think we need private partnership. Otherwise, it's a program. Yeah. Enough programs. Enough government programs.

This is what's killing us. Government programs, bloated administrations, unaccountable government. unrestricted tax law. So this part about having a private component will restrain that. Yeah, I hope so. I fear it's the corruption that is the devil in the details. You know, and it doesn't see, it seems to me, be it a Fortune 500 company or a bloated bureaucracy.

It's this idea that it's this corruption that seeps in. You know, I work for a Fortune 500 company. There's a lot of great people there. And, you know, the agenda is to make money for the shareholders. And I get it. That's how it should be done. But at the same time, when you dehumanize people by giving them a number, you know, it's easy to, that's the first rule of war, right, is you dehumanize people.

And it seems like that same corruption runs on both sides. I don't have an answer to it. It's odd. that's a complex conversation yeah it really is man it really is because it goes to morality and it goes yeah that's a good point to agenda and it goes to motivation right so you're right I mean corporate America it's its sole purpose is to generate income for its quote unquote constituency or its or it's you know shareholders I would say that the kind of

corruption that we need to pay attention to here is corruption like within the departments. Right. And so there was there is so currently we have the highest tax state of the nation. Right. Yeah. But what we don't account for are the hidden taxes and fees that nobody knows about. So if you legislation goes in, it's passed, the budgets are passed. Then they go into the back room, the smoke filled rooms I'm going to suggest, right? That's where amendments. Amendments are made to pass legislation. These amendments are added to the legislation and nobody knows about them until you're willing to read through a manual of the most laborious language.

You don't realize that, oh, I didn't realize we were, I thought we were paying taxes for this. I didn't realize we did this. Or I would say, and maybe even more importantly, and this actually started with the Lingle administration, when she said to these departments, yeah, you can implement these policies, but you must raise your own resource. to fund them. In other words, the general fund will not fund certain components of Department of Education or the Department of Health or DLNR. So what has it done? It's empowered DLNR in Department of Education, Department of Health, to generate their own fees. And so we call them fees. They're actually taxes. Are they taxes? Not legally, no. Do they impact your daily living? So when people say, well, our taxes are high, but they're kind of like California.

But they don't account for the fact that you have layers of hidden taxes and they're called fees, established by quote, unquote, government agencies, Department of Health, Department of Education, right? You know, Department of Tourism. All of these people are, they have the authority to generate fees outside the general fund. this is where corruption is happening. And so if you're a department, let's say you're a department, a deputy director of a department, and you really want to get something done, you want to, you know, you want to promote something.

So you just generate, you generate a group of people. You get a policy together. You evaluate it. And you pass on the fee to the consumer, the people of Hawaii. And then it's within the department. and nobody can say you're being taxed. They don't go back to the legislators and say, hey, you raise it our taxes. How come we're paying for this at the parks department now?

Wow. You want to have access to the park department? You have a fee. These proposed fees are happening all the time. So even tourists are coming in. They've proposed all these fees all the time. There should be a tourism tax. This is not a state tax.

There's these taxes that are added to the tax, even though they're considered they're called a fee. this is where a lot of corruption and the cost of living in Hawaii is being recognized. Yeah, I didn't know that. This must stop. You can go. You can look and look at the taxing authority and read about this stuff. It is pervasive. And there's no restraint on it.

Wow. No breaks, no checks. No checks. And interestingly enough, I mean, I think Linda Lingle's original idea was don't burden the government with asking us for more money. right asking for more taxes to undermine it but rather than being disciplined rather than asking our government to account for the taxes that are taken in the people's money we just say here's an avenue to go raise some more money yeah yeah and so i think it was probably was i don't know for sure i don't know linda but i you know you can it doesn't take a lot of discernment yeah wisdom and

discernment or a gift, you just have to look at things from a real sober perspective. You don't have to be cynical. You don't have to even judge character or motive. You just have to look at the tangible universe. The physical universe speaks loudly about why people are getting crushed. That's a great point. That's a great point. Carrie, I want to be mindful of your time. I'm sure you have a, I think you mentioned you had another meeting coming up. Is there anything you want to leave us with that you got coming up or that you've learned or that a message you want to get out before we go. Well, George, I just want to say thank you again. I just love this conversation.

You know, I know that I'm rambling. I feel like, oh, you just ramble on. I just want to tell the people that are watching this podcast, will you please come, come to our website and look, ask questions, go to a meet and greet, start a meet and greet. Hit the donate button. So, you know, the election's coming up. I'm hoping that each of you watching this podcast are registered.

to vote if you don't. You need to go online, use your phone. Five minutes, literally. You need to check your registration and you to vote. The only way the people get responsible government is the people to be back involved in government. People must come out of the stands. You know, I'll use a football metaphor or a sporting events metaphor. You have the actual game is on the field. It's not in the stands. People must come out of the stands and must get re-engaged, even if they feel like, wow, What's the point? And that's exactly what's going on. Come out of the stands. Get back involved in life. Take back your self-government. Participate in the process. Give yourself to things that matter. Stand for your family. Stand for your legacy. You must stand.

Stand up. Stand up for your right. Get up. Stand up. Right. Give up the fight. That's great. That's beautiful. You know, and I, I, I, I, I, I want you to know, I've gotten a lot of great feedback. You know, I'll throw out some, I know a lot of drivers, my friend Matt, Dan, Andrew, Jamal. There's a bunch of guys, a bunch of teamsters that are coming to me saying, hey, George, this guy Gary, man, he's got some great ideas. Hey, George, I was never into politics, but you know what? This guy's making sense. So, you know, I'm sure that you see the progress, but I'm sure at times there's always questions.

But I want you to know, people are talking about you. You're doing a fantastic job out there, and you're getting people to. ask the right questions. I know a lot of teams that are proud that you're doing what you're doing, so thank you. What an honor, George, it's just an honor to be with the people. And I can tell you, honestly, 10 to 1. We have an event, 10 to 1 will come up to me and say, we're in. Yeah. We get it. We get it. We must have change. Thank you. I hear that every time we go, wherever we go. So I appreciate those folks that are reaching out to you, the drivers. We will stand for the people and that the people, they will enjoy the abundance because there's more than

enough. We just have to make sure that we manage that, which is being taken by our government. So I applaud you, George, for being a voice for the people. I'm hoping that people will respond. So I'm grateful for you. Thank you for this morning. You're right. I got to rush off a meeting. Absolutely. Sir, Aloha. Aloha. Have a good day.

All right, my friend.