CNHA Questions OHA Geothermal 'Investment'
HECO to Shutter Plants, Refocus on 'Low Cost' Renewables
Kakaako Development and Honolulu's Trifecta of Failures
Hawaii freeway conditions and costs are ‘disgraceful’
Hawaii Highways Rank 48th in Nation
HI First Amendment lawyer: ‘It is a terrible time to be a journalist’
Auto Insurance: Hawaii Teens Cheapest in Nation
Governor Signs Bills Expanding Protections, Support for Women and Keiki
Puerto Rico Jones Act report needs public review
Hawaiian Airlines Holding Locals Hostage
VIDEO: Occupy Activist NB Member Argues With Police
HNN: List of July 4th fireworks shows in Hawaii
Inouye Cronies Never Ran a Real Campaign, Lock Hanabusa in the Past
Borreca: When Hanabusa announced her decision to challenge appointed Hawaii U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, she did so without even a press release — just a series of press and TV interviews.
Tonight Hanabusa is expected to host a campaign rally of sorts at the Bishop Museum. As of Monday, there was no press release, no Internet chatter, not even a Facebook page.
A campaign spokesman said about 150-175 community leaders are expected to attend. Former Govs. George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano are slated to speak in praise of Hanabusa. Also, Hawaii businessman Walter Dods and Irene Inouye, U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye's widow, will be there lending support....
All of this stands in contrast to Schatz's campaign, which was launched in March with a Farrington High School campaign rally and has featured an energetic round of labor union endorsements and near-constant pleas for funds....
Schatz's campaign tactics are ramping up the latest in both modern voter identification and social media awareness, there is something to be said for the pre-Internet and cell-phone campaigns of Ariyoshi, Hawaii's only three-term governor. (The thing to be said is that it doesn't work anymore.)
Without a public notice or even a press release, his supporters would repeatedly hold huge rallies at Aloha Tower and Aloha Stadium with more than 10,000 supporters who were equally engaged, ready to work and determined to vote for Ariyoshi.
Campaign consultants called them the "little sparrows." The Hanabusa-Schatz race will show if the flock is still here.... (They aren't)
read ... Against Schatz, Hanabusa applies guerrilla tactics
Four Weaklings: Guava Jelly, Softball to Substitute for Inouye?
CB: Peter Boylan, Inouye's former deputy chief of staff and spokesman, said hobnobbing wasn't the senator's style. Instead, Inouye built his relationships through working across the aisle, even helping raise money for Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, Boylan said.
"Sen. Inouye was a private person who rarely socialized with other members. His free time was spent with family and friends," Boylan said. "Members knew he was not someone who traded in speculation and was a champion of good ideas, regardless of party origin. He said little, did a lot and you could always take Senator Inouye at his word."
But congressional scholars like Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein say it's not as easy to win friends in Congress as it was when Inouye was a young senator. When there's partisan gridlock, personal relationships don't go as far.
"Sen. Inouye was from a different generation and not surprisingly built his friendships differently from newer cohorts," said Mann, the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.
Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, notes that Hawaii has lost relationships that were forged over decades.
"Inouye was universally admired. Akaka was extraordinarily well-liked by all," Ornstein said. "But the fact is that in today's Congress, personal relationships, while still important, take a back seat to party and tribal imperatives more often than not."
"The personal can matter in smaller ways — a reluctance to say awful things about colleagues ... or a willingness to vote for smaller bills. But when the partisan lines are drawn, these things just don't matter the way they used to," he said.
PR: Sikh Rejects Gabbard, Suggests Dung Beetle in Future
As Before: Congress.org: "Abercrombie is a follower"
read ... An Article Planted by the Hanabusa Campaign, of Course
Polls: Hanabusa 46%, Schatz 35% (Abercrombie at 45%)
Politico: In the EMILY’s List survey, which was taken by the Democratic firm Clarity Campaigns, Hanabusa was 11 points ahead of Schatz and drawing 46 percent of the vote — making her a clear favorite, at least at this opening stage of the cycle.
A source familiar with the survey said the full poll data showed Hanabusa “leading in every county except Honolulu where she’s running close to even.”
But Schatz pollster Mark Mellman said the appointed senator’s campaign has just come out of the field with a survey of its own showing the race effectively tied at 37 percent. After rounding, Schatz is up by 1 point.
Hanabusa is the better-known candidate, but among voters who know both Democrats, Schatz leads 47 percent to 34 percent, Mellman said.
“All the evidence is that Schatz is on the move and she is falling,” Mellman said.
Both polls tested likely Democratic primary voters. The EMILY’s List poll ran on June 10 and 11 and included 771 respondents for a margin of error of plus or minus 3.53 percentage points. The sample was collected from 80 percent land-line users and 20 percent cell phones.
The Schatz poll tested 600 respondents between June 26 and 30.
The flurry of private polling information comes a day after the Hawaii news site Civil Beat published a survey showing Schatz leading Hanabusa by three points, 36 percent to 33 percent.
That poll tested 869 registered voters, as opposed to likely primary voters.
read ... Dueling Polls
Gays Stack Senate Judiciary Committee
PR: ...Senate Majority Leader Brickwood Galuteria and Sen. Malama Solomon join Sen. Clayton Hee, the committee's chairman, Sen. Maile Shimabukuro, the vice chairwoman, Sen. Les Ihara, Jr., Sen. Mike Gabbard and Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom.
The seven-member committee would have jurisdiction over a same-sex marriage bill.
The composition of the committee had been an issue during the debate over civil unions in 2009. Senate leaders had placed six members on Judiciary -- an even number -- and the committee eventually became deadlocked.
Hee, Shimabukuro and Ihara have said they favor same-sex marriage, while Gabbard and Slom are opposed....
By adding Galuteria and Solomon, who both favor same-sex marriage, the count jumps from 3 to 2 to 5 to 2.
read ... About Illusion
Operator of Gay-Friendly B&B Gets 20 Years for Kiddie Porn
SA: The FBI began an investigating after it received digital images from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The images, which had been circulating on child pornography websites, showed an adult male with two children.
The FBI made public a picture of the man last October after it enhanced the background of one of the images and spotted a Hawaii island telephone directory.
Within hours, callers identified the man as Tucker, operator of a bed-and-breakfast in Pahoa.
A FEDERAL prosecutor said the FBI searched Tucker's home and found the same images on his computer. Agents also located the children, who identified themselves and Tucker in the images.
Tucker pleaded guilty to one of six charges of sexual exploitation of minors against him. All of the charges alleged that he committed the crimes in or around 2008.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Les Osborne said the charges were based on 15 images the FBI recovered. He said the exploitation of at least one child occurred over a period of time because in one image the child's hair is in bangs and in a later image the child's hair is long.
Background: Alleged Big Island Child Molester Arrested: Runs Gay-Friendly Bed & Breakfast
read ... About Reality
Obamacare Employer Mandate Delayed Until after 2014 Elections
WS: Obamacare's employer mandate, which would require businesses with 50 or more employees to provide employees with government-approved health insurance or pay big fines, was supposed to take effect on January 1, 2014. But Bloomberg reports the deadline for the employer mandate has been pushed back one year....
read ... Meanwhile the Doctors' Penalties are still in Place
Hawaii IRS Scandal: Who live here have starring roles as Victims
HM: In the IRS scandal, some people who live here have starring roles as victims of government excess.
It all began with a sudden apology from the Internal Revenue Service for targeting the Tea Party and other conservative groups. Two of those groups are in Hawaii, making us one of 18 states where people seeking nonprofit status were harassed by endless IRS requests for documents and grilled with bizarre, if not illegal, questions.
How invasive did this get? One Mainland Christian group was asked to detail the contents of its prayers in its application for non-profit status. I guess this group has now learned that the solitary track of footprints in the sand is where the IRS left its side to leap onto its back.
The Honolulu Tea Party was asked to name every speaker it hosted, hand over copies of their speeches and even provide the names of people who just attended any rally it had held. Oh, and had anybody associated with the group—even members of their families—ever planned, or is now planning, to run for office?
Naturally, by the end of May, the local Tea Party groups had joined two dozen similar Mainland groups in a lawsuit against the Treasury secretary and the IRS.
Related: TEA Party IRS Suit
read ... Dependence Day
Paying Every Month, Hundreds Wait Six Months or More for Solar Panels to Be Turned on
HNN: Since March, the Browns have been paying $240 a month on their solar lease, in addition to their $300 to $400 electric bill.
"You're paying through the nose for the electricity that you shouldn't have to be paying for, because you're paying for solar. It's totally unfair," explained Brown, whose solar system was turned on today for the first time after HECO set up their new meter.
Photovoltaic customers don't get to immediately start using solar energy once the panels are installed on their rooftop. They still need to have a final building permit inspection from the City and County. Only once the city has issued an approval can HECO switch out their new meter, at which point the homeowner can then turn on their solar power. It's a process Brown says she was told by Solar City should take about a month.
"It's not just me. It's every installation that they have done and I even called around to other solar companies to find out what their wait time was and would they put it in writing that the wait time would only be a month after the installation? ‘Oh well, we can't quite do that.' Ok, two months? ‘Well, we can't exactly put it in writing.' I said, ‘Six months?' ‘Well, now maybe that's a little closer.' I know that the company I'm dealing with isn't the only company dealing with this frustration," described Brown.
read ... Paying Thru the Nose for 'Free' Electricity
Judge Slaps Down Carroll Lawsuit
Law 360: A Hawaii federal judge on Monday finalized her decision to reject a proposed class action that was aimed at invalidating the Jones Act, a law designed to help the American shipping industry that the plaintiffs had claimed granted a de facto duopoly to a pair of U.S. shipping companies.
U.S. District Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi refused to reconsider her April ruling that killed the suit, which said the plaintiffs had alleged only generalized grievances on behalf of an extremely broad class of persons
read ... No Surprise Here
Pahoa High leads in misconduct
HTH: Between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2012, Pahoa students tallied a total of 1,663 Class A and Class B offenses of the state’s administrative rules Chapter 19, which governs student misconduct and discipline.
Class A offenses include assault, burglary, fighting, homicide, robbery, sexual offenses, terroristic threatening, or possession or use of a dangerous instrument, weapon, or substance. Class B offenses include bullying, disorderly conduct, forgery, false alarm, gambling, harassment, hazing, theft, trespassing, and inappropriate or questionable uses of Internet materials or equipment.
Three other East Hawaii high schools top a list of Big Isle school offenses by school during the five-year period, according to data provided by the Hawaii Department of Education in response to an open records request. They include Keaau High with 984, Hilo High with 873, and Honokaa High & Intermediate with 728. They are followed by Kealakehe with 689, Ka‘u High and Pahala Elementary with 611, Waiakea High with 499, Konawaena High with 436, and Kohala High with 145.
read ... We're #1!
DoE Pays $8000/room for Projector Systems
CB: I have a Promethean board in my classroom. It’s an impressive beast of an installation, with a motorized lift to adjust the height, a giant, thick-bodied screen with connectors and wires protruding from the back, and a futuristic looking projector shooting into a convex mirror that reflects the image back onto the screen.
You can hook a laptop up to this behemoth and write on it using a special pen - about the same way you can use a projector to project onto a white board and write on that. But the Promethean also allows teachers to design fancy interactive slide shows, or games that students can play by coming up to the board and moving or revealing answers with a touch.
I found a Promethean online for a little under $8,000. I’m not sure how much our school paid for them, but there is one in every single classroom, making Campbell High one of the most “technologically advanced” public schools in Hawaii.
Unfortunately, the majority of these devices have become little more than expensive projectors.
Obvious Question: Who are the 'Promethean Channel Partners' in Hawaii
read ... Who do they know in Purchasing?
Bums move before city crews enforce sidewalk nuisance law
KHON: The city went to three known problem areas in Honolulu on Monday to roll out the new tool.
The majority of campers opted to have their items trashed on the spot and not pay the fee.
“We don’t want to store anything, it’s a burden on us and it takes up space we want to through notices say please if you have things you value please remove them,” Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell said.
Surprisingly, many of those who were camping on the sidewalks were packing up even before city crews arrived.
Shelters and service providers spent last week reminding them to clear out and offering help.
“We need to keep our public spaces open to the public and secondly we need to make sure that those who have he ability to receive services should have those services,” Institute for Human Services Director of Development Marc Alexander said.
IHS has 40 spaces open in its men’s shelter, 30 beds in its women’s shelter, and some additional spaces at its family shelter.
The mayor says he intends to do these sweeps on a regular basis. Daily, even at night and on weekends, hitting problem areas twice in a day if needed.
read ... Suddenly Enterprising
Anti-GMO Nuts make Fools of Themselves Twice in One Day
Inouye fund issues first round of grants to 35 Hawaii nonprofits
PBN: The Hawaii Community Foundation’s newly-established Daniel K. Inouye Memorial Fund recently gave its first round of grants totaling $107,000 to 35 local nonprofits....
Since the fund started about seven months ago, it has received more than 600 donations from the community totaling around $173,000. First Hawaiian Bank recently donated $100,000 to the fund.... (Helping Hanabusa)
read ... Supporting Profitable Nonprofits Even From the Grave
Bill eliminating Hawaii’s cap on charitable deductions to become law
PBN: House Bill 430 was the nonprofit sector’s most significant piece of legislation in the 2013 session.... The cap was seen as a disincentive for charitable giving. Kelvin Taketa, the Hawaii Community Foundation’s president and CEO, told me that the cap traded $12 million a year in general fund revenue at an estimated loss of $60 million fewer charitable donations per year.
read ... Laffer Curve, Hello?
Sentencing delayed for girlfriend of officer in pot case
AP: Athena Sui Lee was scheduled to be sentenced Monday in federal court. But the hearing has been delayed until Aug. 2.
She pleaded guilty to possession and cultivation charges.
Former officer Michael Steven Chu received an eight-month sentence. He blamed Lee for getting him into the mess that cost him his job. He said he was simply helping her.
Lee faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
read ... Just another day in the HPD
Hawaii Gets Tough on 'Johns'
CB: Abercrombie signed four bills into law this year — three on Monday — that increase services for victims and heighten penalties for those who solicit prostitutes.
No longer just a petty misdemeanor, soliciting sex from a minor is now a felony that carries a minimum $2,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
Lawmakers also closed a big loophole in how "johns" who pay prostitutes are charged....
HR: Hawaii Gov. Abercrombie Signs Human Trafficking Bills
read ... Hawaii Gets Tough on 'Johns' to Fight Prostitution, Trafficking
Kauai Water Bills Jump 11%
KGI: The Department of Water is still holding informational meetings to discuss the 11.2 percent water rate increase that took effect Monday.....
read ... Shut Up and Pay Up
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