Entries for 'Selected News Articles'

This is the case in which Ralph Nader challenges the number of signatures needed for an independent presidential candidate, on the basis that the law is irrational, because Hawaii requires approximately six times as many signatures for an independent presidential candidate as for an entire new party.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Hawaii had the highest wellbeing among states in 2010 with a Well-Being Index score of 71.0. Wyoming, North Dakota, and Alaska are also among the 10 states with the highest overall wellbeing scores.

Hawaii currently has no background checks in place.  A note from page 3 of Inspector General Report explains: “A statute requiring FBI checks exists in Hawaii; however, no implementing rules have been published.  A Hawaii State official confirmed that nursing facilities are not yet required to conduct such checks.”

Dela Cruz (rejected) the idea that Takase was fired, saying that her term had ended Friday.  In fact, according to state law, while the governor does indeed appoint OIP's director, that appointee does not have a set term length....  (ooops!)

A behind the scenes knock down drag out fight between Abercrombie and Inouye over how and when to push Akaka under the bus would explain the Palafox DoH dismissal—Inouye forced Abercrombie to dump Palafox--and would explain Clayton Hee’s bizarre attacks on Abercrombie’s DNLR nominee William Aila.

“I think she would make an outstanding United States senator,” Djou says. “The best illustration of Governor Lingle’s abilities is 2006. In 2006, it was a highly toxic environment for the GOP nationally, but she managed to win reelection not only by a large landslide but by the largest margin in the history of the state.”

None of the Democratic names being tossed around as a replacement for Akaka are pro-life. At the top of the list are pro-abortion Lieutenant Governor Schatz and pro-abortion Rep. Colleen Hanabusa. Regarding the open Hawaii Senate seat, former Democratic Rep. Ed Case, also pro-abortion, told Politico, “I have been interested and I remain interested.”

As the Cook Report's Linda Duffy noted in a National Journal piece, there is a potential cloud on the horizon for Hawaiian Democrats. She is Linda Lingle, the relatively popular former Republican governor of the Aloha State....

An email sent in June 2008 with regard to teachers who were late in making the paybacks reads: "Brother Veli wants to have all the “salary returns."  And he says to withhold future salaries from those who have not made them."

More incriminating still is an email dated June 13, 2007...which recommends "increasing the number of teachers from Turkey ... to acquire more money."

Not a word about the Akaka Bill....

House Bill 1407 would require birth parents' names be written next to adoptive parent names on finalized official adoption birth certificates. This means women wanting anonymity will not be allowed to go through the regulated adoption process, but will be left with nothing to do but to abandon their babies on doorsteps or revert to abortion.

We'd have to check the archives to see if the Honolulu City Council ever did issue a condemnation of Mao Tse-tung for the genocide of Chinese people back when the cultural revolution, the great leap forward and all that stuff took place. 

It didn’t really seem anyone was in a great rush to pull out the paint and scrub-brushes for the arrival of the world’s media, business chiefs and heads of state for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum meetings in November. At Honolulu’s wonderful, breezy, open-to-the-elements airport there’s little to suggest this is a city that wants to be in the same league as the likes of Seoul, Sydney and Osaka.

Within the last two-years, over 200 cities and 14 counties in California have banned or passed a moratorium on pot shops.  And now the dopey Hawaii Legislature wants to follow California's failed experiment.

...it is quite likely the 113th Congress that convenes in 2013 will find an even greater percentage of Senators who have yet to complete a full term than in the 112th - should at least five more senators announce their retirement or get defeated in their reelection bids.

Despite the member upheaval that the Senate has experienced over the past few election cycles, there are certainly still several state delegations with a wealth of experience in the nation's upper legislative chamber....

Another big winner today was Indiana Representative Mike Pence, whose amendment to eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood passed 240-185. The move will cost Planned Parenthood more than $75 million per year, a shortfall it will need to make up by dramatically increasing the prices it charges to pimps for business consulting services….

The rating agency, which used data from 2009, said there was cause for near-term concern about “a number of” pension plans and pointed to the “considerable pressure that these obligations will place on many government budgets”. The greatest risk would come at the local level since labour-related costs were a higher percentage of local government budgets, Fitch said.

What you are observing below is the beginning of what will become a sustained campaign to re-write the history of “The Good War” and “The Greatest Generation” to fit the mold of social-democratic propaganda.  BTW: Dan Inouye is paying for all of this….

 "A study of 11 other state education lotteries showed that states are likely to decrease their growth of spending for education upon operating a lottery designated for that purpose."

"This decrease occurs regardless of the revenue generated by the lottery," Sanders added. "Meanwhile, states without lotteries maintained and increased their education spending more than states with lotteries."

the commission drew new maps that eliminated most of the canoe districts. The end result was that Hawaii had the largest population deviations in the country. The deviations hit 38.9 percent for the Senate....

The U.S. House of Representatives is likely to vote to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.

 First, it usurps rights that belong to parents, not the state. Parents get to choose what kind of toys their play with -- A. B, there's no evidence at all that the sale or use of toy guns by children leads to gun violence in later life. There's no study that affirms this. There's no longitudinal effort to look into this at all. This is clearly legislators acting out of their own unproved neuroses.

Three, the law completely overreaches. The Hawaii statute specifically calls for jail time for people who violate it.

In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose inside the tent--only later his unsightly derriere!

Steinmetz said: “This is the most outrageous comment eTN has ever received from a public official in our more than 10 years of being in business.

The Hill: Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has said he will soon distribute to senators his definition of what he considers an earmark....

“The new pork mechanisms will depend on how Inouye has decided to define pork/earmarks,” Wheeler said. “The loopholes will be there; he and his staff know how to make them. Once the ‘definition’ is set, the workarounds will only be limited by the human imagination.”

Former Rep. Charles Djou (R-Hawaii) all but swore off elective politics in his recent farewell address, but the former congressman recently penned an article that is sure to ignite speculation among the state's political observers over whether a 2012 bid against Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) is in the offing.

Candidates have until Friday February 18 to file nomination papers for Oahu’s upcoming Neighborhood Board elections.  Up for grabs, all 439 seats on 33 Neighborhood Boards.

In the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

When the U.S. Supreme Court asks for a response from the side that had won the case in the lower court, that is a sign that the Court is thinking that it might possibly take the case. The response from Hawaii is due March 2.

What would you call a health-insurance program that has worse health outcomes for cancer and heart disease than Medicare or private insurance, that pays doctors and specialists so little that they often refuse to see patients, and that’s driving state budgets into bankruptcy? If you’re the Obama administration, apparently, you call it a success and make it the cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act....

…others on retirement watch, including Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.), offered no indication they will run again in 2012.

Akaka, 86, raised less than $2,000 in the fourth quarter and had just $66,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31....

“The President has stated unequivocally that he will veto any legislation containing earmarks, and the House will not pass any bills that contain them,” Inouye said in a statement. “Given the reality before us, it makes no sense to accept earmark requests that have no chance of being enacted into law.”

The move also comes after House and Senate Republicans have agreed not to seek earmarks for the two years of the 112th Congress.

In detective novels and television crime dramas like "CSI," the nation's morgues are staffed by highly trained medical professionals equipped with the most sophisticated tools of 21st-century science. Operating at the nexus of medicine and criminal justice, these death detectives thoroughly investigate each and every suspicious fatality.

The reality, though, is far different. In a joint reporting effort, ProPublica, PBS "Frontline" and NPR spent a year looking at the nation's 2,300 coroner and medical examiner offices and found a deeply dysfunctional system that quite literally buries its mistakes.

And Knight laments that while the Hawaii Senate has bought into the "separation of church and state argument," it does not seem to have any trouble promoting Islam.

"In 2009, the Hawaii Senate chamber approved an Islam Day resolution, and it shows that there's a double standard here," the senior writer decides. "Something that celebrates or acknowledges Christianity, it's verboten. But when you celebrate Islam or anything else, then it's OK. That's multiculturalism; that means anything but Christianity."

"Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void."

...that could imperil a cherished practice of U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.  Inouye, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has long defended earmarks as a constitutional prerogative. He once called himself the "No. 1 earmarks guy" in Congress.

This information also applies to Native Hawaiian firms, many of which are doing exactly the same thing.

Governor Abercrombie’s nominee to head the State Department of Health, Dr Neal Palafox MD, has suddenly withdrawn his name from consideration. HNN and the Star-Advertiser report that Palafox may be “involved in a medical reimbursement investigation.”  Palafox was picked over Senator Josh Green MD of Kona.

Republicans expect states and local governments to beg Congress for relief from their underfunded pension programs sometime soon. But unlike Congress' haphazard, expensive responses to the Wall Street and automaker crises, GOP lawmakers intend to be ready this time.

Their plan has three parts: First, a nonbinding resolution that Congress will not bail out the pension programs; second, a bill to codify that into law and require transparent public pension accounting; and finally, a managed bankruptcy bill for the states.

If our legislators no longer pray inside the state capitol, then we citizens need to pray in their stead every day that they are in session, preferably on the steps of that building. When election time comes around again, let us all remember who among them thinks we no longer need God in our government. 

Last week Hawai`i Free Press took a look at the experience of Burlington, VT voters who eventually voted to repeal Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).  Today we are sharing a voting analysis by investigative reporter Lance Williams of CaliforniaWatch who evaluates a 21-candidate San Francisco Supervisorial election very similar to the one won by Tom Berg. 

It's been called the Great Garbage Patch and "the most shocking thing" Oprah has ever seen: a massive island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean that, according to many reports, is twice the size of Texas, outnumbers plankton, and has killed millions of sea birds.

But many of those claims, according to a new analysis, are huge exaggerations. Others are downright false.

Implicit in Mr. Gates’s five-year assessment was the possibility that the North could soon solve one of its biggest technological hurdles: manufacturing a warhead small enough to fit atop a missile….

Did you know that an idealistic U.S. diplomat disobeyed his Washington superiors early in World War II and saved 2,500 Jews in southern France, before Nazis could ship them to death camps?

"The Congress is the most futile place in the world, and the most discouraging, and the most depressing" for people in this position....

Because voters in the Dec 29 special election for Honolulu County Council Dist 1 elected a Republican, Tom Berg; the billion dollar Progressives at Civil Beat have concluded that the system of elections must be changed, “to prevent such an election in the future.”

That’s some favor Abercrombie did his old pal; he took a non-issue that was as settled as it’s ever going to be and fired it up all over again.

Maui’s County-wide plastic bag ban goes into effect January 11, 2011.  No EIS has been required.  Here’s what they are hiding:

Hawaii is taking the pole position of political surrealism in the far-flung states. The new governor, Neil Abercrombie, an iconic longhair and college pal of Barack Obama's father, has decided to make knocking down Obama birther conspiracies his top political priority.