Expenditure Focus Rather Than Tax Policy
2016: Obama's America Now Showing on Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Big Island
CSC: New Campaign Spending Violations by Kaniela Ing
VIDEO: First Lingle-Hirono Debate
Liquefied Natural Gas for Hawaii: Sourcing and Transportation Options
Senators: DoD Disenfranchising Military Personnel
Star Advertiser: Democrats, Lingle Own Hawaii’s Corporatist Economy
SA Editorial: 1)For example, keeping health care affordable as our population ages makes the future of Obama's Affordable Care Act a crucial choice. Hirono would preserve it; Romney would repeal it; Lingle would significantly modify it. (Every insurer in Hawaii is eager to get on this Obamacare gravy train. Kiss your private insurance goodbye--you’re gonna be on Medicaid.)
2) On defense, the Republicans would increase defense spending, but don't say how; Obama would limit spending, even while his Asia-forward vision would put more troops and hardware in Hawaii while winding down U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, where many Hawaii-based forces are deployed. (Score one for the GOP.)
3) On energy, Romney would double down on fossil fuel development, easing regulations and opening up more federal land to oil exploration. Obama would invest more in clean, renewable energy — a closer match to Hawaii's goals of going 70 percent green by 2030, an initiative championed by Lingle. (Every wind and solar scammer is rooting for Obama. Meanwhile they are driving your electric rates up. You know some people still believe all the global warming stuff. Do you know anyone like that?)
4) The larger debate is over the proper role of government. Obama points out, with some justification, that government can be a positive agent for change. Hiring more teachers, firefighters and police officers, as well as investing in infrastructure projects, could put a big dent in those jobless numbers. Romney and the Republicans respond that raising taxes on the affluent to pay for his jobs plan would cripple the so-called "job creators." These arguments are more than academic in Hawaii, which has a large number of government workers and organized labor in the construction trades. (It would be score one for Dems—except it has to be a split decision because the SA doesn’t figure how many of these jobs are defense-related and doesn’t account for Republican pork. With or without Hirono, the Dems pork barrel gravy train ends when Inouye ends. Thus Linda Lingle IS ‘Plan B’ for Hawaii.)
Score: National Dems 2.5 – GOP 1.5 but Lingle wins the SA on energy yielding a score of 2.5 Lingle, 1.5 Hirono
read … Everything you need to know about Hawaii’s corporatist economy
‘Fact Check’ Urges Obamabots to Protest Lingle Ads
SA: Hawaii is experiencing a rare opening for one of its two U.S. Senate seats due to the retirement of veteran lawmaker Daniel Akaka. U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono would seem to be the odds-on favorite in heavily Democratic Hawaii, but she faces formidable opposition from former two-term Gov. Linda Lingle, a moderate Republican. Third-party mainland money is already rolling in for both candidates, with much more to come in the next eight weeks. (Funny, Ms Annenberg never said anything about the PAC money which helped Tulsi beat Mufi. Oh, that’s right, they’re both Dems.)
Though less intense, expect super-PAC money also in Hawaii's 1st Congressional District race between Democrat incumbent U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa and Republican Charles Djou, who held this office for almost eight months in 2010.
An Annenberg Public Policy Center study found that since December, 10 third-party groups spent more than $108 million in ad dollars on the presidential contest alone, over half (51 percent to be precise) of it on 35 ads containing deceptive or misleading claims.
The rules governing candidate and noncandidate commercials differ.
Where stations are obliged to take even blatantly false ads by federal candidates, they can reject third-party ones outright. Because they don't have to air them, stations can be sued if their content is libelous or defamatory. (See http://www.flackcheck.org/stations/faq under item No. 11 for FCC regulations.)
Media stations can protect the public from deception in a second way by doing what WFAA did in Dallas when it debunked the deceptive ad about Cruz on air and online.
To inform local stations that Hawaii values both clean air and clean airwaves, go to FlackCheck.org's "Send E-mail to Stations." More than 20,000 emails have already been sent from our site to station managers around the nation. The process takes less than a minute.
read … Mobilize to Knock Lingle off the Air
Democrats: Manabat an Embarrassment, Lied under oath
SA: Scott Nago, the state's chief election officer, has forwarded to the state Attorney General's Office Martinez's complaint that Manabat gave false information about his party membership to the Office of Elections.
"I am asking the Democratic Party of Hawaii to immediately disqualify Mr. Manabat based upon my facts, for the better of the State of Hawaii and for the betterment of the party, not to mention the embarrassment," Martinez said in her letter to the party.
"… I am asking to immediately disqualify him and replace myself accordingly."
As it did in Thielen's case, the party has the option of taking internal action against Manabat for violating the party's rules, including expulsion. But such action would not remove Manabat from the general election ballot. An expulsion could prevent Manabat from running for re-election as a Democrat in two years if he were to win against former state Rep. Bob McDermott in November.
read … Candidate complains primary winner failed to properly register
Maui Democratic congressional candidate Ing accused of violating campaign-spending laws
MW: Taken entirely from "Friends of Kaniela Ing" campaign-spending reports, Ing campaign event announcements and other public information, the 19-page complaint asks the commission to sanction House District 11 candidate Mark Kaniela Ing for numerous violations of campaign spending law. The GOP charges that Ing used illegal campaign contributions to obtain public funding; took more than $5,900 in cash from his own committee without appropriate receipts or descriptions; held fundraisers without notice; and failed to report expenses for fundraisers.
The number of infractions and the disregard for Hawai'i campaign spending laws supports over $14,000 in fines that may be imposed under law, according to the complaint. State law says that: "Any person who knowingly or intentionally falsifies any report required by this part with the intent to circumvent the law or deceive the commission ... shall be guilty of a class C felony."
read … Felon Ing
Ing Bought Votes at $11 each
MN: Kaniela Ing, who handily won the Democratic primary race for the South Maui state House District 11 seat, spent a little more than $11 per vote for each of the 1,108 votes he received.
Ing, who secured 43 percent of votes over his three opponents, reported spending a total of $12,372 on the primary election, according to the state Campaign Spending Commission….
Ing will face incumbent Republican Rep. George Fontaine in the November general election.
Fontaine reported spending $16,863 on his primary election campaign, meaning he spent more than $24 for each of his 685 votes. He did not have a Republican challenger.
In the 2010 general election, Fontaine spent close to $6 for each of his votes to beat out (child molesters’ friend) Bertram, who spent less than a nickel per vote in that election. Despite the large gap in spending, Fontaine won by a margin of only 48.9 percent to Bertram's 46 percent of votes, or a difference of 172 votes.
Related: CSC: New Campaign Spending Violations by Kaniela Ing
read … Cost per vote
Publicly Funded Candidate Funnels Money to Illegal PAC?
WHT: Like all candidates receiving public funds, Wille, a Waimea attorney, cannot accept donations for her runoff against Oliver “Sonny” Shimaoka, a pastor at New Hope Waimea Christian Fellowship.
The amount that each candidate receives depends on how much a successful candidate has spent in previous elections. That’s why for the General Election Ford and David each received $7,320 from the Campaign Spending Commission and Wille received $173, or about 2.4 percent of the amount given to the candidates in the 6th District.
Wille had $243.61 in cash on hand after the primary election, meaning that she can spend $416, or about $7 per day, on her campaign until Nov. 6.
Shimaoka, who is not accepting public funds, has raised $14,235.08 and had $5,412.48 in cash on hand.
Legislators who crafted the law in 2007 expected that some publicly funded candidates could be outspent, so they inserted a provision that provides for the release of “equalizing funds” to level the fiscal playing field.
But in a 5-4 decision in 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the portion of an Arizona law that provided matching funds for outspent publicly funded candidates. That law was similar enough to Hawaii’s law that the Hawaii State Campaign Spending Commission decided to stop providing matching funds.
That leaves Wille in a bind.
Wille received $11,427.46 for the primary election and spent most of it by election day. She placed first in a four-way race that included Bob Green and Bill Sanborn, but she didn’t win an outright majority.
A strong supporter of the Hawaii Clean Elections law, Wille is hoping donations will go to a political action committee set up to support her. She said the name of the PAC is the Citizens for a Sustainable North Hawaii, although no group with that name is registered with the state.
Shimaoka said he didn’t sign up for public funding because he was unsure if he would have enough funds to carry him through the election. He said he’d use his remaining war chest to “probably do some radio ads, like I did for the primary.” He said union endorsements and the resulting contributions helped with his campaign. Wille, for her part, says that “I’m not a rubber stamp.”
read … About Big Island Politics
BJ Penn Endorses Kawika Crowley for Congress
CB: Kawika Crowley just may attract the MMA crowd. Hilo’s BJ Penn has endorsed the GOP longshot, according to a press release from Crowley.
read … Crowley Endorsement
Cayetano, Caldwell Debate Before HS Students
CB: When Ben Cayetano was a college student during the 1960s, civil rights and the Vietnam War were dominant issues.
The lesson he learned from that period, which he shared with high school journalism students Saturday at the University of Hawaii, was to be skeptical of everything government tells them — especially what the city has to say about rail.
"This project deserves the utmost scrutiny from the members of the profession that you will be joining," he said. "You need to ask the hard questions, to probe, to go beyond what you are being fed by the city."
Cayetano's opponent in the Honolulu mayoral race, Kirk Caldwell, had advice to share with the students as well.
"Dream big" and "believe that we can do better," he said during his remarks at the Journalism Day forum. Journalists deserve credit for having the guts to have a byline and allow themselves to be judged — "good, bad, effective, truthful" — by the public.
Caldwell agreed the rail project deserves a lot of public scrutiny. But, as a supporter, he believes rail is the way to go for a better future.
The candidates also had a lot to say on other issues such as infrastructure and tourism, hinting that the race may become less of a one-issue election.
Bob Jones: Cayetano, Caldwell And Rail
read … Ben and Kirk Talk Journalism And, Of Course, Politics
A&B Politics: ‘Local Knowledge an Advantage in Hawaii’
SA: The Honolulu-based firm has mapped a new strategy for one of its remaining backbones — real estate investing — after carving off its ocean cargo transportation subsidiary, which for decades had been A&B's dominant piece.
The plan involves selling close to $600 million in commercial real estate — warehouses, retail centers and office buildings — that A&B owns on the mainland, and using the proceeds to buy Hawaii commercial property….
Stan Kuriyama, A&B's chairman and chief executive officer, said the company believes it can get more value and earn more money through Hawaii real estate investing because of its local knowledge.
"We think (A&B) has an advantage in Hawaii," he said. "The company can compete for deals that might be too small for larger, out-of-state players but are too big for underresourced local investors."
read … Political Connections Pay Off
No-town Kapolei
HW: Have you been to the Second City recently? Neither has anyone else who doesn’t live there, apparently. Recently, a friend said, “Oh, I was out in Kapolei the other day, and I was surprised at how it has grown up. You really have a bustling city out there.”
If only! Turns out, she had mistaken the strip malls along Farrington/Kamokila Boulevard for the urban center. She didn’t know where the city of Kapolei was. Nor do many others. Why? There’s not much there. The fifty blocks of the downtown business section sit all but empty. Only in the last few months have a couple of streets been opened that allow people to pass through it.
Kapolei has everything one could want for a second city. It has a deep draft harbor, a complete airfield, a City Hall, a Judiciary building, police and fire stations, a hospital (Hawaii Medical Center West, slated to reopen in another year) a new University, elementary, middle and high schools, a major heavy industry area, two oil refineries, an electric plant, a major resort, a marina, shores and beaches, fishing grounds, acres of some of the best farmland in the world. What it doesn’t have is a city.
It’s so non-Second-City that the Rail even stops (or starts, depending on how you look at it), in the empty fields three miles short of it, not bothering to go there.
read … No town
Cacophony of candidates and coqui hits crescendo
Shapiro: Hawaii sent 38 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, and local party Chairman Dante Carpenter declared that the atmosphere surrounding President Barack Obama's nomination for a second term was "surreal." Only to Democrats and Dadaists is this a good thing.
» Hawaii congressional candidate Tulsi Gabbard got to show her stuff along with other rising stars in a televised speech at the Democratic Convention. The segment was entitled, "So You Think You Can Serve a Full Term?"
» City lawyers asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider its unanimous ruling that stopped construction of the $5.26 billion rail project until burial surveys are completed. That's about as likely as Moses reconsidering the Ten Commandments.
read … Surreal
Psychiatrists Get Mentally Ill off Streets
SA: The psychiatric outreach began in February. In its first six months, the program served 135 homeless individuals. Fifty of them were linked to a psychiatrist or psychiatric resident, and 48 entered the Institute for Human Services shelter, with overlap between those two groups. Fourteen transitioned into stable housing, such as a care home. Seven entered substance abuse treatment….
The outreach team found one elderly woman lying in cardboard boxes in her own bodily waste, unable to walk, in Chinatown. They learned from neighbors that she had been there for 17 months, Phillips said.
"We brought in Dr. Chad Koyanagi and he provided a psych evaluation in the field and began to work with HPD on getting her placed in the hospital for medical observation," Phillips said. "She is now living in Waipahu in a care home, happy as a clam. I think she is 88 years old."
A frail 67-year-old woman with salt-and-pepper hair, who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, had been homeless for more than 10 years. Born and raised on the island, she turned aside her relatives and relied on the kindness of shopkeepers and others for food.
"She's been difficult to reach and very difficult to get any help for because of her dementia and her paranoia, her psychosis," her son said in an interview. "She had a tendency to just run, to leave and not come back."
After a coordinated effort, she is now living in a small shared apartment with her own room. Her son has become her personal guardian and visits regularly. Koyanagi volunteers to make monthly house calls, administering long-acting medicine.
"Before the medication, there was just no way you could have rational conversations with her," her son said. He has helped her rebuild her identity from what he called a "blank slate," obtaining a new Social Security card, a photo ID, Medicare coverage.
read … Who the Homeless Really Are
Thousands of Marines to push beyond Hawaii
MCT: The Marine Corps’ plan for future deployments in the Pacific is solidifying, with 22,000 Marines expected to be based at locations west of Hawaii at any given time in coming years.
Many of those troops will deploy on a rotational basis, Commandant Gen. Jim Amos told reporters at the Pentagon on Aug. 23.
read … Thousands of Marines to push beyond Hawaii
Bob Woodward: A President Cornered
WP: Before the meeting, without telling Obama, the four leaders had tentatively agreed on the framework of a deal. The congressional plan guaranteed that the debt limit would have to be revisited during the 2012 presidential campaign, and Obama was insisting that any agreement would have to take the country through the election….
“Mr. President, I am sorry — with all due respect — that we are in this situation that we’re in, but we got handed this football on Friday night. And I didn’t create this situation. The first thing that baffles me is, from my private-sector experience, the first rule that I’ve always been taught is to have a Plan B. And it is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B.”
Several jaws dropped as the Hill staffer blasted the president to his face.
“So I don’t have a lot of options, in the past 36, 48 hours, to put together,” Krone continued. “We’re supposed to be the ones that fend off an economic catastrophe. And what we find ourselves is now, with no deal, we’re going to have to root for the worst possible things to happen in order to prove to the Republicans that you cannot be so callous and let the debt limit expire.
“That is a horrible position that we’re in,” Krone said. “And so this may not be the perfect deal, but it’s the only deal that we have on the table right now in the situation that we find ourselves.”….
Reid gave Krone a ride back to the Capitol. The majority leader was almost like a father to him.
“You stood up to him,” Reid said. “He needed to hear it, and nobody was telling him.”
USA Today: Pelosi denies muting Obama on phone call
read … A President Cornered
Waikiki '73: That Communist is Gottfried Seitz
SA: In Eric Yanagi's book "Waikiki 73," a photo of an old man is captioned, "the philosopher" Otto Preis. Sue Brimeyer emailed that it's Gottfried Seitz. "He was a good friend of my (UPW union boss) family from the early 40's until he passed away. Gottfried was a self-proclaimed ombudsman for all human rights!" (Typical CPers)
Late Hawaiian Sovereignty leader Elizabeth Kamakahukilani von Oelhoffen cited Seitz as an influence on her activism. She and her younger sister Gertrude Olani'alii von Oelhoffen were both members of the "Seitz Club" of Palolo in the late 1940's. Gertrude said he taught them that even if they were under-privileged, "no one is better than you." Instilling pride into the children, he taught them "to fight for the good." (Typical CPers)
Seitz, a haranguer of public officials, most notably his former employers, was never afraid to take his disputes into the public eye. This included his terminations and withheld pay. He wrote that he had been fired from ten other jobs. Those jobs included Social Security field assistant, parole officer, adult educator, substitute teacher and natatorium custodian. (This is what happens to CPers when they don’t learn to be union bosses.)
His fervor for advocacy, social justice and his associations did catch the eye of those in Washington DC. By 1950, the pro labor Communist line newspaper Honolulu Record had come under the scrutiny of the Committee on un-American Activities branding it a Communist instrument. That committee included U.S. Representative Richard M. Nixon (and some other dude named Robert F Kennedy). The committee's report named Seitz, a shareholder, as being on the newspaper's Board of Directors and as the Chairman of the Legal Action Committee of the Hawaii Civil Liberties Committee. Seitz would later refer to himself as an un-indicted co-conspirator of the "Hawaii 7."
He ran for the office of City Supervisor in 1956 after being fired from his job as a custodian at the Natatorium the previous year. A photo depicts him standing on a soapbox in front the McCandless Building on Bethel Street, the bystanders seemingly dis-interested. Its caption, " A lone voice in the wilderness..." Gottfried is gripping the microphone stand. A loud speaker is on ground beside him. (This is what happens to CPers when they don’t learn to be union bosses.)
By the 1960's, Seitz's attention invariably turned towards the Vietnam War. Jim Albertini wrote, "He was active in the anti-Vietnam war effort and other community justice struggles. A very nice guy. Very committed and showed up at a lot of the protests. That's a classic photo. Rumpled as usual, but always very friendly and humble, with a keen intellect."
SA: UPW Connection
Related: July 7, 1935: Moscow orders first Communists to Hawaii
read … One of the Original Communist Colonists
Dopers: Taylor Camp exhibit brings a universal moment of history to light
KGI: In one picture, a couple’s room shows a shelf about to break under the weight of books in the background. Such detail hints at the fact that many of these settlers were indeed intellectuals, thus dismissing the notion that such individuals were uneducated moochers when, in fact, they were not only able to read, they could also grow food and build houses. (LOL! No bias here, eh?)
look … at photos of the houses the ‘intellectuals’ built
Birthers: Only Thing Dumb Enough for Obama to Feel Superior to
CNN: "You were born in Hawaii?" he asked the child next, then pointed at him. "Do you have a birth certificate?"
Behind Obama's grin and laughs from those nearby lie the conspiracy theories of some conservative Republicans, who maintain that Obama was not born in the United States, and is therefore not eligible to be president.
He released a certification of live birth during the 2008 campaign, and in the spring of 2011, released his long-form birth certificate. Both show that he was born in a Hawaii hospital on August 4, 1961. Contemporaneously published newspaper announcements also noted the birth in the Aloha State. Only "natural born" citizens of the United States are eligible to be president.
Among the highest-profile "birthers," as they are known, are Donald Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, the top law enforcement officer in Maricopa County, Arizona, earlier this year held a press conference to announce findings of an investigation he led into documents.
Trump, who has endorsed and fund-raised for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, threw a wrench into the Republican candidate's messaging this summer with tweets and comments, including on CNN's "The Situation Room," skeptical of Obama's birthplace.
And Romney himself raised the issue two weeks ago. At a rally in his home state of Michigan, Romney made what he later claimed was a joke about his own birth certificate.
(Quick IQ Test: Are you influenced to support Obama because of this?)
read … I wrecked the economy and bankrupted the nation, but vote for me because birthers are worse and they’re all birthers
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