Unkempt statuary, grounds not artful
It’s not that other investors in the arts haven’t used the tax code to finance improvements, but Genshiro Kawamoto doesn’t have much credibility in arguing he’s brought beauty to his properties.
The Japanese government has arrested the eccentric developer on suspicion of evading more than $8 million in corporate taxes, reportedly to buy art for a museum he’s building in one of his Kahala homes.
Would this be to house the 17 statues he’s put in that outdoor garden he’s created, to less than critical acclaim?
The man has made many millions, somehow. Usually people with the means to buy two dozen Kahala properties in their lifetime have some kind of talent or skill propelling their success, but it’s not clear what kind of secret sauce Kawamoto has.
His story — sheer aggravation to some, entertainment to others — has surely been one of the quirkier chapters of Hawaii real-estate history.
Other de-occupiers leave on good terms
While Honolulu Hale remains frustrated in attempts to dispatch the (de)Occupy Honolulu encampment from Thomas Square, protesters have garnered praise from government officials.
Not these protesters, however, and not in this city. Here, all that can be done now is to sweep the campers to the King Street sidewalk while trees are being trimmed on the Beretania Street frontage where tents have become a seemingly permanent fixture.
In Philadelphia, by contrast, the Common Pleas Court on Tuesday acquitted a dozen Occupy protesters of conspiracy and "defiant trespass" charges stemming from a 2011 sit-in protesting "racist predatory lending" at a Wells Fargo branch.
"I must say you are the most affable group of defendants I’ve ever come across," Judge Nina Wright Padilla told them, shaking hands with all 12.
That in the City of Brotherly Love. We’re not feeling too brotherly about the Occupy group here in the Aloha State.