The routine placement of DEI famatics in positions of authority around America is a dangerous and destructive fad. Witness M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, who said in a livestream debate hosted by the University of Hawaii last year, in discussing water distribution on the island,
“Let water connect us and not divide us! We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity…How do we coexist with the resources we have?”
Manuel, a former Obama Foundation leader who coached volunteers in “practical skill building for social change,” Manuel said he considered water “an important tool for social justice.” So it should not be surprising that when the real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of Lahaina recognized the threat posed by a dangerous combination of high winds and drought-parched grasses in Maui and asked Manuel for permission to fill up one of its private reservoirs in case firefighters needed it, the Obama social justice warrior’s main concern was equity, not preventing death and destruction from fire. Manuel told the company that it had to consult with a local farmer about the impact of water diversion before he would approve the request. Five hours passed without water being added to the reservoir, and the brush fire that had been contained that morning flared up again and swept through Lahaina, burning everything and everyone in its path.
In the wake of the the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, the West Maui Land Company wrote to the state water regulator, “We watched the devastation around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD [Maui Fire Department] if our request had been immediately approved…We need to act faster in an emergency.” Ya think? But it’s hard to act fast when bias and wokeness has made the government stupid. Manuel, a champion of environmental groups and Indigenous residents who want to preserve stream water for traditional uses and limit water diversions by private companies, thus emulated the infamous Ford Pinto lawyers who authored the “Let ’em burn” memo. Their top priority was profits, his was “equity.” Results were similar, though by the time all the fatalities are in, we will know that a lot more people burned up in the Maui fire than in exploding Pintos.
Manuel has been “redeployed,” but Hawaii claims the job change “does not suggest that First Deputy Manuel did anything wrong.” Right. Now we know that we can’t trust the state government of Hawaii to tell the truth either. See: 64. Yoo’s Rationalization or “It isn’t what it is.”
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Ethics Alarms 
Those rich people in Lahaina got what they deserved.
Officially 27 people perished due to the poor design of the Pinto. We’re already there in HI. I say the hell with them. The state is so blue it’s barely distinguishable from the ocean around it, and it gave us Nazis Hirono, who told men to “shut up and step up” during the Kavanaugh hearings. Funny, I don’t hear her yelling at Joe to “shut up and step up” now. They got themselves into this mess, let them get themselves out the same way.
Harsh? Maybe. But I don’t say this in a vacuum. How many folks said that the people of East Palestine deserved to be poisoned from that train derailment due to the area having voted for Trump? How many others said that Texas deserved the hurricane damage in 2017 for being a red stare? How many said that Steve Scalise deserved to be shot dead at the baseball practice because he was on the wrong side politically? That’s what I thought.
If it sucks when it happens to you, it sucks just as much when it happens to someone else. If you take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune because he is on a different side politically than you, don’t be surprised if he takes pleasure in your misfortune later on, or at least is unwilling to help you out.
No, acting like that doesn’t represent our better selves. No, acting like that is not what we’d want from someone else. No, acting like that isn’t ethical. However, modeling ethical behavior, doing good to those who do bad, and all that other stuff just doesn’t seem to be working. I do think that at some point you have to reassess and say “this isn’t working for us,” and take a different tack.
Hmmmmm…this comment landed in moderation. I’m beginning to wonder if WP is exercising some prior restraint on comments it doesn’t like.
Biased AI screening?
I wonder….
Maybe the word “Nazi” causes WP to seek a safe space.
Man, the supposedly leftwing free speech anti-censor crowd would not see that coming!
(welp, not the word nazi)
That was a pretty funny word substitution, though.
Which wasn’t even intended, stupid autocorrect. It was intended to be “Maizie.”
You know, I recently got a new phone and I have noticed that the auto correct is much, much more proactive (and weird) than it was on the old phone. It would never occur to my old phone to make that kind of substitution — the new one I can totally see it.
I’ve also noticed that Google (I have an Android) is a lot more intrusive than it was 5 or 6 years ago. They want to take a much bigger hand in steering me towards what they think I might want. Unfortunately for it, I have a delete function and I am not afraid to use it.
But heck, I still use my phone to make phone calls, so just call me a dinosaur.
Sorry, my full handle didn’t make it.
I can fix that!
Ty
I have appreciated previous responses from both Other Bill and Steve-O-in-NJ, but I believe some of the responses here are unethical. Rationalization # 2 “Sicilian Ethics, or They had it coming,” since these victims were “rich,” (a doubtful assertion as many were working class). Possibly also # 36 “Victim Blindness, or They should have seen it coming” as the victims are somehow responsible for starting the fires (no evidence for that). Also perhaps # 51 “The Apathy Defense, or Nobody Cares,” where the response is lacking in compassion for others.
Pretty sure Bill’s “rich’ comment had his tongue coming out the other side of his cheek….
Also definitely a lot of tit-for-tat going on. The point of ethics is that you don’t drop them because they’re inconvenient or because other people aren’t reciprocating.
Ernest. I was simply parroting the woke’s response to the fire. I suspect they view it simply as righteous social justice and redistribution of wealth. After all, I’m pretty sure Lahaina provided for single family housing, which is per se systemic racism. I’m sure Lahaina will need to be rebuilt with lots of high density and public housing and get rid of all those high end and tourist shops. I’m partial to reductio ad absurdum.
Mostly because there’s so much absurdum and there’s such a minimal need for reductio.
I’m just saying that conventional ethics isn’t working for the right anymore.
Mr. Marshall are the emails you sending out being fact-checked unknown to you being done? Why I ask because the email that was sent to me today from Ethics concerning this topic could not connect and instead some of the email contained the following :
The Latest Fact Checks curated by Media Bias Fact Check 08/21/2023
URL : https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/2023/08/21/the-latest-fact-checks-curated-by-media-bias-fact-check-08-21-2023/
Posted : August 21, 2023 at 6:00 am
Author : Media Bias Fact Check
Tags : Daily Fact Check
Categories : Fact Check, Facts Matter, Factual News, Least Biased, MBFC Daily Fact Check, Original
If you would like I can forward the email to you.
???? I don’t send out ANY emails, sgm. No idea what you are describing. WordPress supposedly will alert you to posts here, but that’s not my department.
Thank you, Mr. Marshall, for answering. I will erase the odd email.
So I’m going to say something that , at first glance, may sound pretty unethical here, but let me defend it first, before telling me that I’m going all in on Rationalizations. That being said, my TL,DR is “play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
I do think that it is fair to argue that, for the most part, the people of Lahaina had it coming. This fire was the rather predictable consequence of years of bad judgement and voting practices. First, the sugar cane faming dissolution into non-native dry grassland came because “we couldn’t possibly grow sugar cane there, it was too insensitive to the natives”. Then they didn’t make any reasonable plans to replace the farms with native plants that could handle both the wetter times and the drier times, but instead just let the farms grow over, which led to imported grass and other vegetation taking root off of spreading seeds. This worked out for a bit when things were wet, but these grasses are unable to handle the drier times. This led to a high fire hazard with a high burn interval. Then they decided that they would go all in on the green energy to the degree that there was a huge governmental push (which often starts with the residents) for green production over safe electric lines, AFTER there was already substantial documentation that the power lines were likely to cause significant fires. Of course, the electric company is nowhere near blameless, but neither are the voters.
The idea that we now have DIE standing in the way of appropriate water being used to put out a fire, because we find that DIE is more important than lives and property (after all, we are founded on the notion of diversity, equity, and inclusion right, not that old fashioned life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness), well, that is a conscious choice by the electorate of that state too.
I hope this is understood as a warning to much of the West. We have similar issues and we continue to fight for the ability to put our safety above green technology which continues to show “unexpected” hazards that were written about in their own foundational documents. If Washington would butt out, maybe some of our local governments could get a grip.
I do not feel happy about saying that this was a much expected turn of events. I am very sorry that anyone lost lives, and yes, I do hope they turn this mess around. However, if you choose to put your communities in danger, you cannot be surprised or offended when your community is in danger. This is just as much of a reasonable and predictable consequence as what we see in the city of San Fransisco, where the governmental employees are being told to work from home for the foreseeable future because it is too dangerous on the streets.
Sad to say that this is COTD worthy (only sad in that this episode is so tragic).
To rephrase your initial paragraph, one can say that this should be a learning moment. Actions (and elections) have consequences, and sometimes it takes a real tragedy to effect change. But I have no confidence that we (as an aggregate) will learn the right lessons.
Aaaaand—it’s UP!
Assuming the private reservoir isn’t upstream from another potential reservoir that might have better fire-fighting properties, at what point does the developer ignore the delay and simply do what is right?
In the event of a fire there really isn’t a “too soon” to act. It’s only degrees of too late.
Unfortunately, there is no way to prove that the developer made the right decision if the fire doesn’t get out of hand. Hindsight is 20/20. We are long past allowing “I made the best decision I could with what I knew”. It is all about should not could anymore
You do realize that many environmental laws are quite draconian in their punishments. Take a feather off a dead eagle that you find in the woods and you could be facing years in jail and up to a $100,000 fine. You will likely get a lesser sentence for manslaughter. This law applies to over 1000 species of birds. What do you think the penalty is for pumping water illegally if you aren’t a Chinese corporation?