Abercrombie announces DOH team, DOT deputy
KITV: Former Soldier Hails Final Senate Vote: Hawaii Man Was Discharged Over Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
“Right now, I am feeling happy. I think there are new opportunities now for people who want to join the military,” said Smith.
With those mixed feelings, he stood outside Wheeler Air Base. Smith was attached to a unit from Wheeler when he was deployed to Afghanistan. He reflected on the decision he made that changed his life.
“I got back from Afghanistan and I met the person who is my partner now. I felt very conflicted about having to lie, so I came out to my commander. I didn't ask to get kicked out but that’s how it turned out,” said Smith.
He joined the army after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Smith was given an honorable discharge, but said he felt hurt when he left and did miss the service aspect of the military.
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Toguchi: Give us more money or we will close your schools
In 2008, Democrats and Republicans joined hands to support legislation to require the state to consider closing small public schools in Hawaii. The bipartisan bill noted that shuttering underutilized schools might be necessary because of scarce resources and demographic shifts.
At the time, lawmakers criticized the Board of Education and the Department of Education for keeping small schools open. The bill also warned about public and political resistance from constituents in areas where low-enrollment campuses would be targeted.
While the proposed law was vetoed by then-Gov. Linda Lingle, the DOE has been conducting school consolidation studies statewide. But the political resistance remains: The very same lawmakers critical of a lack of school closures have now launched not-in-my-backyard campaigns to save their neighborhood schools. (Yadda yadda yadda…)
Here’s what the BoE is NOT cutting: Hawaii DoE: Cost of waste, fraud, and corruption between $191M and $431M per year
Here’s how to free your school if taken hostage: Laupahoehoe Liberation: Rural school targeted for closure votes for charter conversion
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Med school's Palafox is named state health director
Dr. Neal Palafox was named director of the state Department of Health by Gov. Neil Abercrombie at a press conference today.
Palafox, 58, is chairman of the Department of Family Practice and Community Health at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine. He is also the director of the school's Family Practice Residency Program….
Like the woman he replaces, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, Palafox is a practicing physician. He is on the active medical staff at Wahiawa General Hospital….
Loretta Fuddy, who has been chief of the Family Health Services Division in the Health Department, will be DOH's first deputy director. Fuddy, 62, holds a master's degree is social work.
Former City Councilman Gary Gill is the Health Department's new deputy director for environment. Gill, 50, returns to a position he held in the Cayetano administration. He is currently program director for (the Global Warming Cultists of the) Blue Planet Foundation.
Also named yesterday as deputy director for administration in the Department of Transportation is Jan Sekiya Gouveia. Gouveia, 42, is currently vice president for executive operation at Waimana Enterprises. (ANOTHER AL HEE/SANDWICH ISLES CRONY)
REALITY: Sandwich Isles Communications: Political Connections Pay Off
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Kobayashi confirmed as Hawaii U.S. district judge
The Senate confirmed Leslie E. Kobayashi as a U.S. district judge in Hawaii, U.S. Sens, Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka announced today.
Kobayashi will fill the vacancy created by Chief District Judge Helen Gillmor's rise to senior status last year….
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Inouye retaliates against Philippine Veterans
Withdrawal of support by an influential American senator has practically sunk passage by the current US Congress of a bill seeking duty-free import of Philippine garments made from US-made textiles.
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii), chairman of the finance committee, was reportedly peeved when a group of Filipino veterans filed a class suit against the US government demanding compensation.
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SA: Start now on setting up authority for rail transit
The rationale for putting a transit authority in charge of a massive undertaking like this is straightforward. The resolution to create the agency through City Charter amendment, proposed by the City Council last year, asserted that the authority "would have the ability to make decisions more quickly because of its singular focus: the success of the rail transit system," unfettered by the range of public and political concerns that occupy the City Council. Voters passed the amendment in November, which means the city should move to organize the agency governing board of 10.
Some political influences over the quasi-independent authority remain, however. Three of the nine voting members are named by the mayor, three by the Council. The directors of city and state transportation departments make the seventh and eighth members; these eight people choose the ninth. The director of the city Department of Planning and Permitting sits on the board as the 10th (but nonvoting) member.
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American Community Survey captures current state of economy
Whether driven by the county's expansion of its Maui Bus system or by the rising cost of gas, more residents are taking the bus to work. Around 3,155 Mauians commuted on public transportation in 2009, up from just 163 who were estimated to have done so in 2005. Five years ago, 75 percent of commuters drove to work alone in their cars; last year just 65 percent did, with more people car pooling, taking the bus and walking instead.
In one of the most striking statistics, the county increased its total inventory of housing by about 4,000 units from 2005 to 2009, but the rental vacancy rate skyrocketed from 3 to 32 percent over the period.
While official Census results will be released Tuesday, Maui County's total population has grown over the past 10 years, the survey indicates. A total of 145,203 people were reported living in Maui County in 2009, up from 128,094 in the 2000 Census.
Maui residents also are around two years older than they were a decade ago. The county's median age in 2009 was 38.4, compared with 36.8 in 2000, according to the Census.
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Lawyer Modafferi rebounds from dreadful 'ice' addiction
Modafferi came to Hawaii in 1983 after being recruited by Honolulu Prosecutor Charles Marsland right out of Boston's Suffolk University Law School. He spent 11 years as a deputy prosecuting attorney, becoming branch chief of a newly created narcotics division. In 1994, he went into private practice focusing on criminal defense.
During those years, he was quoted in the newspaper and on TV news just about every other week. He took high-profile cases and was never the sort of attorney to duck a reporter's question.
"Some lawyers love publicity for publicity's sake. I always loved publicity for good cases. I love to talk about the client or the case or the law. I didn't want it to be about me," he said.
On Dec. 7, 1997, the then-38-year-old attorney was arrested and charged with distribution of .69 grams of crystal meth to a government informant. His name was all over local news along with long analysis pieces about this new image of an educated, successful "ice" user.
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Blind man, woman file a countersuit, saying predatory practices hurt them
In 2005, they had owned a home in Dream City for eight years. Galiza's brother next door wanted to sell his bigger home, and he and mortgage broker Eric Miyajima urged the couple to keep their small house and buy the bigger one. By living in the big house and renting out the small house and three apartments in the big one, they were told they could build up assets for their retirement.
That dream didn't work out. They've been foreclosed on both houses. Their credit is damaged, and although they continue to live in the second house, which is specially equipped for their needs, they face the threat of eviction at any time.
Their case offers an example of just about everything that could go wrong during the mortgage run-up and run down, according to their attorney, Jim Fosbinder: unrecorded transfers of deeds, predatory bait-and-switch offers, failure to disclose required information to borrowers, promises of assistance that never came; stonewalling their attempts to modify not one but two mortgages; robosigners; and missing documents.
There's no doubt Galiza and Tapat failed to make payments, although they tried until their savings were gone and their credit cards were exhausted. But, according to Fosbinder, it isn't even certain who now owns the mortgages or is entitled to receive payments, since the mortgages were put into a trust and sliced and diced into bonds sold to who knows who
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Show biz delivers $407 million to Hawaii's economy
The economy may stink like dried squid, but don't tell the bean counters who monitor Hawaii's film and television industry. By their tally, a record year of production spending was even better than they thought.
They've put the final number for 2010 at $407 million, which is much higher than a late summer estimate of $347 million, said Georja Skinner, administrator for the state's creative industries division, which oversees the Hawaii Film Office. The new tally is a 77.7 percent increase from the $229 million in 2007, the previous record year.
The economic impact, as wages work their way through the community, is now believed to be a staggering $638.9 million, she said.
All that work created about 3,300 jobs, she said.
(This is the sales pitch for more Act 215/221-style Tax Credits)
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Party Unity: Progressives seek felony prosecution for Mufi’s fake Venture Capitalists
HAWAII NONPROFIT CORPORATIONS ACT
HRS [§414D-12] Penalty for signing false document. (a) A person commits an offense by signing a document the person knows is false in any material respect with intent that the document be delivered to the department director for filing.
(b) An offense under this section is a class C felony. [L 2001, c 105, pt of §1]
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Snobs want $250,000 per sq mile to find fireworks
Poinography: I write a blog about Hawaii politics. On the island of Oahu we have a huge amount of illegal aerial fireworks and improvised bombs(!) that are detonated by normally-law-abiding people to celebrate New Years Eve, with a window of about one month before and after that sees a build-up and taper-off from that single night of intense activity. Around Independence Day there is a smaller version of the same anarchy. Despite literally thousands of offenses, the authorities typically make only one or two arrests per year and claim that the arrest rate is so low because the LEO (or a member of the public willing to testify for the prosecution) must actually witness the offense being committed. People with respiratory ailments and nervous pets of all kinds are affected.
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Peter Boy's siblings hope truth comes out
To date, no one's been arrested or charged in Peter Boy's disappearance, but the Acol children told social workers horrifying stories of abuse they say they received at the hands of Peter Kema Sr., who's denied killing his son.
"We knew that Peter (Sr.) was drinking. We were fearful when he was drinking," Chauntelle said. "There was something you might do and he would come after you. And you never knew what it was. Sometimes it was stupid, like running around the house. You can tell your kids to stop running around the house and you can punish them, but getting drunk and beating them up is unacceptable behavior.
"For him not to be charged with anything for what we have against him and what we said against him is not right by the law. You're there to protect children, but you're gonna let somebody beat the crap out of their kids -- not even his kids besides Peter Boy -- you're gonna let him get off scot-free, it's not right."
WHT: The question remains: 'So where's Peter?'
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