Sheep eradication has failed at affecting Palila numbers—but it sure has killed a lot of sheep.

Puna is one of the very few places in Hawai`i where young local families can afford to buy their own home and begin life as a family.  But environmentalists are working hard to put a stop to the inflow of locals and replicate the success they have had in making Maui and Kaua`i into exclusive havens for rich mainland transplants.

Our fifth annual conference is taking place Wednesday, September 24, 2008 from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Waikīkī Hotel and Resort.

Since 80% of smokers start by the time they are age 18, prevention is the key.

The plastic bag ban has a certain lucrative logic to it. It turns out that plastic bags gum up plastic recycling machines and reduce the resale value of bundled used plastics. So what is the solution? Improve the recycling machines so they don’t become gummed up? No. Instead recycling companies are using their clout with City and County governments all over the world to impose plastic bag bans. They will inconvenience the public rather than improve their technology.

Puna doesn’t need CDP--Lay off the bureaucrats--Queen of the Tree People blocks WTE--Commission violates rules for HD24--The People’s Rights-- ‘Banana patch’ to be cleared for rail project?

Hawai`i state graduation rates were about 7 in 10 on O`ahu and 5 in 10 on the outer islands. Hawai`i has about 33 high school students dropping out each school day.

Bananas are more radioactive than depleted uranium. Tobacco, marijuana, chocolate, cocaine, heroin, and the human body all emit higher levels of gamma and beta radiation—the most powerful types-- than depleted uranium. Rather than being a radiation source, depleted uranium is used as a radiation shield used to block emissions from nuclear reactors.

It is unfashionable to believe these actions are the result of ideology, but the arrogant prologue to the Puna CDP should put all doubts to rest.

The same problems which are driving doctors out of Hawai`i are forcing cutbacks on services and staffing at the already under funded sister-island Hawai`i Health Services Corp hospitals and now the only privately-operated hospital in Hawai`i County—North Hawai`i Community Hospital.

Good factual information--Reading pleasure--Stopping School Closures--Political prostitutes--Where are the police when you need them?--Hele On the bus--A choice for Puna   

The June 30 deadline to implement the drug testing procedures required under the current HSTA contract has passed without action by the BoE. Recently, in a flurry of BOE meetings, it became apparent that the focus on safety of the children and adults in our school system takes a back seat.

The accountability-free DOE bureaucracy is “painfully aware” of nothing but its own perpetuation.

For two years in a row, hammered by demands for medical malpractice reform and demands to introduce more competition into the Hawaii medical insurance market, the Democratic caucus of the State legislature has delivered a flat “no!”

Now the chickens are coming home to roost.

Governor Lingle said a May 22 letter from Ted Hong, requesting her to veto HB 2972 was one of the first opposition letters to the bill she received.

An ominous countdown clock is ticking louder and louder. How long until Israel attacks Iran to destroy the Islamic Republic’s budding atomic weapons program?

I believe convening a con con would be beneficial for the entire state by allowing residents an opportunity to be more directly involved in the decisions that govern them. For neighbor island residents, the potential benefits are even greater.

Over 250 Puna residents joined Fred Blas for a Maku`u Farmers Market June 21 kickoff rally launching his campaign for Puna’s House District 4 seat as a Republican.

Kona CDP ‘Picayune’--Council gets garbage right--Throw the bums out!--Waiawi: Bananas safe--Imagine the Vog--No-Drill Network  

Instead of cutting bureaucracy, Senators Lorraine Inouye and Roz Baker have a different solution—close down rural schools and sell them to developers. 

Kohala is one of the few Big Island schools not deemed ‘failing’ under “No Child Left Behind” standards.  Under formulas used by the Board of Education under Act 51, successful schools are often punished by budget cuts. Kohala HS will be losing $500,000 in funding for the 2009-10 school year.

Hawai`i’s lack of progress is not due to a lack of planning, but rather to, more than anything else, an excess.  Block anything that’s not in the plan.  So here comes even more rigid planning to lock in an imaginary future...

The Hawai`i Island Journal is closed.  Its last edition, published June 14, carried only a short notice of regret ...

Hawai`i Free Press assists four Big Island mayoral candidates with some suggestions for new campaign slogans:

Tougher laws against people who use the Internet to commit sexual acts against minors.

Akaka Reservation for Corporations--Special rights for terrorists--Tossed from graduation--Raining on the poor--Suing for Smoking--Bush Lincoln--Hawaiians recognized in US Constitution

Citizen--“But officer, officer, this is for my glaucoma.  I have a prescription!”
Officer—“Just because you put a few stems and seeds in there doesn’t make it legal.  I’d know the smell of tobacco anywhere.  Let’s go!  I’m taking you in.”

Councilmember and Mayoral candidate Angel Pilago has found a cause great enough to risk his candidacy - dope.  With Pilago joined by Brenda Ford, Emily Naeole, and Dominic Yagong, the County Council voted 4-4 not to accept $441,000 in federal funds offered to the Hawaii County police for “Green Harvest” marijuana eradication work.

Knife wielding goons demanded money from campers.  Public workers sleep through their shift.  Pavilions are filthy and littered with broken glass.

Leading Hawai‘i County “clean elections” advocates are caught up in a web of campaign spending violations and campaign-related conflict-of-interest charges.

Governor Linda Lingle seeks your input on veto decisions.

In a Feb­ru­ary 28, 2008 letter, Hon­orary Vice-Consul of Italy in Hawaii, Car­men Di Amore-Siah, purports to grant the Hawaii King­dom Gov­ern­ment group recognition by the Gov­ern­ment of Italy.

Molokai’s largest private employer is closing operations. With unemployment already at 7 percent, 120 more Molokai residents (on an island of just over 7,000 residents) are losing their jobs. In a state where politicians pretend to be obsessed with “saving agriculture,” cattle ranching will end on the 1/3 of the island owned by Molokai Ranch.

Convicted felons are being registered. Some jurisdictions propose allowing non-citizens to cast ballots in state and local elections. But are our soldiers voting?

...“Sovereignty is already happening now. We are educating our children.  What we have in front of us doesn’t work.”....

After nationalizing a Kauai poi factory in December, the state of Hawaii is considering collectivized agriculture. A bill before the Legislature’s House Committee on Health would establish a state farm on Maui -- to grow marijuana.

Red hot lava threatening Puna’s Royal Gardens subdivision opens yet another chapter in a long-running saga. A hui of elected officials and state and county engineers in 1961 bought the 1,807 acre site from the Bishop Estate (Kamehameha Schools) for $200,000 after easily obtaining preliminary approval to subdivide from the Hawaii County Planning Commission.

Earlier this year, OHA officials, led by Trustee Don Cataluna, blocked Kauai County from building a residential drug treatment facility for juveniles on a former Humane Society site about a half mile from Kauai’s Hanapepe Salt Pond. This as young Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians are literally dying from methamphetamines and other drug abuse.

Kauai residents, including minors, have been required to leave the island for inpatient drug rehabilitation services ever since Serenity House was destroyed by Hurricane Iniki in 1992. After 14 years of waiting, Kauai Mayor Brian Baptiste broke ground on a new inpatient treatment facility at Hanapepe near the Salt Ponds in August 2006.

But now, thanks to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), construction has been halted and the location may be abandoned.

When the Army’s inevitable discovery of the DU rounds at Pohakuloa came, the activists’ agit-prop show took over the so-called mainstream media. The Hawaii Tribune Herald printed the double lie, “Radioactive find at PTA fuels fears” as its Aug. 26 headline. It is wrong on both counts: It is completely false to call DU a “radioactive find” unless it would be correct to call the potassium-40 laden protesters, “radioactive activists.” Secondly the activists are not fearful but utterly thrilled to discover that DU is present on the Big Island. As Albertini said, “This is going to be bigger than Agent Orange.”

Hurricane Flossie gave Hawaii emergency planners exactly what they needed—another lucky miss. Passing south of South Point, Flossie generated little more than high choppy surf and gusty winds for Kau. Hilo and Puna had very light winds and just over 2 inches of rain. County workers closed off beach access. Schools and state and county offices were closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Kau and coastal areas of Hilo and Puna, many businesses and residential windows were taped and a few were boarded up. The county opened up 10 emergency shelters mostly in buildings where windows had been replaced by wooden jalousies shielded by metal grilles to protect against flying debris.

Jihad vs. McWorld is the name of a March, 1992 essay and a 1996 book published by Benjamin Barber. Barber, a social democratic “third-roader,” argues that both tribal warfare “jihad,” and what he sees as the “threat” of globalism, equally endanger democracy in the post-cold war world. Now, nearly a decade and a half after Barber’s essay appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, it appears that leading anti-globalization activists worldwide have stopped equivocating and decided that globalism is the greater threat. They have teamed up with jihad.

“OK, if they ask you are you related to this person or that, just say yes, OK?”

With that instruction, non-Hawaiian sovereignty activist Shelly Stephens, who sometimes calls herself “Makaala Nakoa” sent three Hawaiians into the Hilo courtroom of Third Circuit Court Judge Greg Nakamura on February 1.

About 500 abortions are performed in Hilo every year.

Running unopposed in the November General Election, Takamine (D-N Hilo, Hamakua, N Kohala) received the predictable campaign contributions from unions. What may be more surprising to readers are the contributions he received from Political Action Committees (PACs) representing Hawaii big business.

...three schools - Hauula Public Charter School, Hawaiian Renaissance Public Charter School of the Arts and the American Heritage Academy - filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General and Hawaii's Attorney General....

Plates and glasses smashed to the floor, books came flying off the shelves and TVs slid off tables across Kohala, Kona and Hamakua districts of the Big Island Sunday morning as a 6.7 temblor shook the Big Island.

Rep. Ed Case called the Democratic Senate Primary vote on Sept. 23, “a Choice between past and future” and explained on his campaign Web site: "This election gives Hawaii's voters a choice between the way things have been in Hawaii and national politics and the way they can and should be. I believe our political culture is broken and must change, and that this election asks voters to choose between the status quo and a better way forward."

But Hawaii Democratic Primary voters said “no.”

Big Island Rancher Larry Mehau, resplendent in a dazzling white “Akaka for Senate” campaign T-shirt, welcomed over 100 Hawaii County Democratic activists to a campaign rally at his Big Island ranch on Sunday, Aug. 27, for U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-HI.  Several of Hawaii’s Political Candidates Show Face Including Congressional Candidates Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz and Gubernatorial Candidate Randy Iwase....