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Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Downtown Café Serves Crooked Politicians -- but not Trump Voters
By Andrew Walden @ 1:32 AM :: 8923 Views :: Ethics, First Amendment, Politicians, Small Business

A Hawaii restaurant has reportedly posted a sign alerting supporters of President-elect Donald Trump that they aren't welcome. (Facebook/@Te-Chang Lin)

According to a sign on the door at 1067 Alakea St, Café 8 1/2 won’t serve the 29.4% of Hawaii voters who cast ballots for President-elect Donald J Trump….

Fox News December 27 reports:

…the café was founded by Robert Warner, a former hair stylist for Vidal Sassoon in San Francisco and former restaurateur in Seattle, along with his wife Jali.

Reached for comment Tuesday, Jali downplayed the sign's supposed ban. She told FoxNews.com the restaurant is not actually asking customers whether they voted for President-elect Trump, and said even if they see a customer with a Trump shirt, “we don’t put anything different [in] your food.”

“Robert just wants to express how much he doesn’t like Trump,” Jali said. “If people take it personally or it hurts them, we cannot help. That’s why we say they have [a] choice if they want to come or not come. We don’t force them.”

She said three people called to complain about the sign when it first went up, “that’s it.”

“We don’t want to create trouble,” Jali said. “There is enough trouble in the world.”

While Jali is soft-spoken, Warner, some customers note, is known to channel the “soup Nazi” persona of New York City and “Seinfeld” fame -- “throwing pots and pans,” “telling off customers,” and “hanging not-so-friendly reminders on butcher paper for his customers to read.”

But another Yelp reviewer took issue with the attitude and the sign, writing: “It was funny on Seinfeld, but this place can rot away. Stay away. Hawaii ain’t like this. There's a lot of better places on the island than to have deal with extra crap like this.”

The sign begs a Really Obvious Question:  If Trump and the 128,815 Trump voters in Hawaii are Nazis—then why are the Café 8 1/2 owners not yet in a Concentration Camp?

Maybe they are collaborators.

They appear happy to ‘collaborate’ when some Hawaii’s corrupt political elite slither in from The Mandalay after yet another lobbyist-rich campaign fundraiser….

Nestor Garcia Cafe 812

Here is an image of ex-Honolulu Council Chair Nestor Garcia posted on the Café 8 1/2 Yelp page.  Akamai readers will remember Garcia—who rotates between politics and ‘journalism’--paid largest fine in the history of the Honolulu Ethics Commission after to a decade of wrong-doing on the Honolulu Council from 2003 to 2013. 

Now the (ahem) KHON assignment editor, Garcia

…agreed to pay thousands of dollars in fines related to ethics violations from his time as a Honolulu City Council member….

He paid an $8,100 civil fine in connection with accusations that he accepted prohibited gifts from lobbyists and failed to disclose conflicts of interest when he voted on legislation that affected those lobbyists….

In January of that year, the Honolulu Ethics Commission found probable cause that Garcia had violated laws regarding acceptance of prohibited gifts as well as the failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

Garcia accepted more than $1,700 worth of gifts such as free meals and golf to talk to lobbyists about rail, transit-oriented development, growth in Kapolei and other issues before the Council, the commission determined.

Garcia was also fined $6,500 by the commission, in 2012, for breaking conflict of interest rules and misusing city resources in his paid capacity as the executive director of the Kapolei Chamber of Commerce.

Yelp: Café 8 1/2 

UPDATE Dec 29, 2016: Restaurant removes anti-Trump sign

 

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