Who’s responsible for that $100,000 raise?

Tom Apple, whose selection as University of Hawaii-Manoa chancellor will come up for approval at Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting, has been in the news during his relatively brief tenure as University of Delaware provost, the job he now holds.

Often, it’s in connection with UD’s new "responsibility-based budgeting" system. What is it? That’s surely a question up for discussion.

And it’s especially relevant now, since President Barack Obama’s warning that some university federal funds may hinge on how well schools hold the line on tuition.

"Every university has budget challenges," Apple was quoted as saying in UDaily, a Delaware campus publication. "We cannot solve these challenges by just raising tuition."

Maybe the proposed $100,000 boost in the UH-Manoa chancellor salary — to $439,008 from the current $337,672 — should be a topic, too.

Lingle, U.S. Chamber hedge bets on Obama

In its new ad boosting the U.S. Senate campaign of former Gov. Linda Lingle, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is taking an approach to political advertising in Hawaii that may be unique to this Democratic state.

The Chamber, which backs the GOP, knows that it’s not the red-meat-eating base of the Republican Party it’s trying to reach. Lingle, according to the ad script, "believes in a bipartisan plan for increasing tourism, working across the aisle with President Obama," and so on.

It’s a little odd — especially remembering how she became a surrogate for John McCain and actively joined the mainland campaign trail criticizing Obama in 2008 — to hear anything like that "working across the aisle" phrase now.