Open Letter: 80% of Hawaii Ag Reject Anti-GMO Bill 113
UHERO: Biofuel Scheme Enriches Landowners, Soaks Consumers
Ethics Commission: Caldwell Stonewalling Corruption Investigations
CB: "Since September, Donna Leong (Corp Counsel) and other cabinet members have failed to provide responses in several significant outstanding (Ethics Commission) matters," Totto wrote in the memo.
He calls the city attorney's behavior "unique in my experience" and that it "delays and detracts from doing the Commission's primary work."
According to Totto, the administration has hindered a number of Ethics Commission investigations by refusing to produce certain information that the commission staff has asked for.
In particular, the memo says, the administration has withheld files related to its investigation into the nonprofit ORI Anuenue Hale and the millions of dollars ORI received in federal grant money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development....
In one matter, the commission wanted access to a Honolulu Fire Department employee’s computer to find out if the employee had been giving preferential treatment to a vendor.
But the request, which was sent to Managing Director Ember Shinn, Human Resources Director Carolee Kubo and IT Director Mark Wong, was largely ignored, Totto said, causing delays in several pending investigations.
The administration later denied Totto’s request, saying the city needed more “background and information” before releasing any of the documentation he was seeking.
Other investigations have suffered similar setbacks due to lack of cooperation as has the Ethics Commission’s attempt to tighten rules related to transit employees, according to Totto.
Totto says the administration has also refused to provide Ethics Commission investigators access to certain information that’s necessary to perform background checks on witnesses with histories of violence or drug abuse problems.
LINK: Totto meeting memo, Memo exhibits
read ... What's Going on Between Ethics Commission and Caldwell Administration?
Lunatic Legislator on Waikiki Rampage -- Smashes 20 Shopping Carts
SA: State Rep. Tom Brower (D, Waikiki-Ala Moana) has been walking his district over the past few weeks, looking for shopping carts that homeless people use to carry and store their belongings.
If the carts are clearly marked with a store's logo, he returns them. If they are not, he pounds them with his sledgehammer and either drops them at a recycling center or leaves them for bulky pickup.
"Recently I went into Ala Moana Park where there were shopping carts near people, and I took them from them," Brower said. "No one really questioned me. Some people thought I was the repo man. When you are walking down the sidewalk with a sledgehammer, people get out of your way. I want to get a T-shirt that says ‘Neighborhood Watch' to soften the image."
Brower estimates that he has returned four carts to stores and destroyed 20....
Brower's tactics, which he outlined at recent Waikiki and Ala Moana neighborhood board meetings, have drawn mixed reviews.
Some residents think he's a vigilante hero. Others, including state Homeless Coordinator Colin Kippen, say vigilantism is not safe and question whether someone who is taking carts could be committing theft or criminal property damage.
While Kippen said compassionate disruption sometimes helps push homeless people into getting the help they need, he discourages private citizens from going down that "slippery slope."
"If the sum total of a person's worldly possessions can fit into the cart and you now grab it and say, ‘I'm taking it,' it doesn't take a lot of imagination to figure out how that could escalate quickly," he said. (Please call the police!)
Waikiki resident Dave Moskowitz said Brower always has been a strong community advocate, especially when it comes to homeless reform and support for affordable housing. But this time, Moskowitz said, he may have gone too far.
"I think it's a little wackadoo," he said....
Tom Brower “What a weird guy.” – Dan Boylan, Midweek, November 27, 2013
read ... Arrest Him for Theft and Destruction of Property!
Sidewalk Sleeping Ban Bill Back Tuesday
DN: What changes did the Council make? The draft being heard now prohibits lying down on the sidewalk "during the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m." and limits it to the three dense urban zones of the Chinatown special district; the Hawaii capital special district; and Waikiki special district.
Links:
read ... Sidewalk Sleeping Ban
Insurer sues over fire at Kahuku wind energy farm
SA: Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's London, paid First Wind about $2.4 million for "business interruption" losses it suffered as a result of a May 23, 2011, inverter fire that destroyed one of 10 dynamic power modules at the core of the Kahuku wind farm battery system. Lloyd's said in the suit filed last week that it is seeking to recover the amount it paid to First Wind....
The fire was one of three that struck the battery system between April 22, 2011, and Aug. 2, 2012. The first fire occurred soon after the 30-megawatt wind energy project went online March 1, 2011. The Aug. 2 fire was the most serious of the three, destroying the battery system and knocking the facility out of service for more than a year.
First Wind installed the battery system at the request of Hawaiian Electric Co....
read ... Wind Farm Fire
Why Rich People are Against GMOs
HM: Wellesley College political science professor Robert Paarlberg has looked at attitudes toward GMOs. He found the opposition to them from residents of wealthy countries does not stem from their fear of new risks the products create.
“Because scientists haven’t yet found any new risks,” he said in a phone interview. “The aversion comes, instead, from the absence of new benefits.”
It is a luxury, in a sense, that people in wealthy countries can reject a technology because they do not perceive a need for it, Paarlberg argues. Except for the farmers who plant the seeds and the seed companies that profit from the sales, he said, few Americans or Europeans notice benefits from genetically modified crops.
“GMO crops don’t look any better or smell any better or taste any better. They’re not any more nutritious,” Paarlberg said. “So consumers have been perfectly willing, not seeing any direct benefit, to take a highly precautionary view of the technology.”
He said that contrasts with the widespread acceptance of genetic engineering in medical applications.
“Where biotechnology does deliver new direct benefits to ordinary citizens, such as biological drugs from genetically engineered hamster cells,” Paarlberg said, “I find it interesting that here there’s no resistance at all, even in Europe, despite what is actually a significant presence of new risks as determined in clinical trials.”
Whatever the origins of the resistance, Paarlberg acknowledges that activist campaigns have kept out of the marketplace just about all of the fruits and vegetables, and all of the animals, that have been genetically engineered in the lab. He cites one exception.
When a crop disease in Hawaii was threatening the papaya, an important commercial crop for that state, a genetic modification helped save the fruit, Paarlberg said.
read ... Rich People
Learning Hilo — The Turnaround
CB: At 5:45 each school morning, Daniel Caluya wakes up the homeless people and transient drug addicts who are camped out in the open-air walkways. After encouraging them to move on, he collects and discards needles and other paraphernalia. Then Caluya welcomes roughly 130 elementary school children to the Na Wai Ola campus....
read ... Learning Hilo
H-1 zipper lane gets second look from Indecisive DOT
SA: In July 2012 state officials publicly launched an $82 million "PM Contraflow" project, with plans to include a 7.2-mile zipper lane on the H-1 freeway between Pearl Harbor and Waikele to help ease Ewa-bound rush-hour traffic.
But months later, they now acknowledge, state Department of Transportation officials began to privately reconsider whether a zipper lane was the best use of taxpayer dollars to ease congestion along one of the most notorious commutes on Oahu.
"We're not really confident that it's going to provide the kind of relief that the people expect or that it would show anything major as far as relief, so we are concerned," Highways Administrator Alvin Takeshita said in a recent interview....
The agency hopes to know by the early part of next year whether it will resume building the zipper lane or scrap the idea.
Either way, it plans to widen H-1 westbound in two locations, re-stripe westbound lanes from the Aiea pedestrian overpass to the Pearl City offramp and provide a shoulder lane that would be used only during the afternoon commute.
The question the department continues to evaluate, Takeshita said, is whether those efforts alone without the zipper lane would reap the traffic benefits the state hopes to gain. A zipper lane would cost at least $3 million a year to operate, he said.
read ... Arguing that More Lanes won't help?
Gay Marriage & Religious Freedom: Laycock speaks out
DC: “Adequate religious exemptions should protect the right of religious institutions not to participate in the wedding or reception and the right not to recognize or facilitate the marriage thereafter, such as by providing marriage counseling or married student housing,” Laycock said in an email. “It is [more] consistent with American values to protect equality and liberty for same-sex couples and to also protect religious liberty for those who conscientiously object to … such marriages.”
Laycock’s stance is consistent with his previous opposition to similar legislation.
According to Laycock, the Constitution protects any religious institution from being forced to perform a same-sex marriage, even if the practice has been recognized officially by the state.
However, even in states such as Massachusetts, Iowa and New Jersey, where same-sex marriage is legal, the types of religious exemptions Laycock argues for do not exist. Only the state legislature in Connecticut has interceded to protect religious institutions after its State Supreme Court legalized gay marriage, Laycock said.
“As momentum has built for marriage equality, supporters have been less willing to protect religious liberty,” he said. “The gay-rights side does not want religious exemptions."
CB: Hawaii Lawmakers' Speeches on Gay Marriage
CB: Special Session Cost $76,800
KHON: LGBT wedding planners claim they will represent 15% of Wedding Market
read ... Gay Marriage: Laycock speaks out
Gay Churches Demand Other Churches Debate Homo Marriage
KHON: Churches have a choice because of the religious exemption in Senate Bill 1. They can choose to hold ceremonies for same-sex marriages or not. But how is that decision made? In the case of the Unitarian Church, the decision was actually made some time ago....
"First, the whole congregation at an annual meeting votes on various resolutions so that was adopted years ago.
he church leaders and members we talked with emphasized that when it came to the same-sex marriage question, it was a group decision.
"Not only a group, but a well-educated group. There was arguments from the various sides, what are the pros and cons and we came out on top," Bornhorst stated.
KHON2 wants to emphasize this is a sample of churches and temples.
Related: Beyond Marriage The Confession: Hawaii Gay marriage advocates let the polyamorous cat out of the bag
read ... Gay Churches Demand Vote
What fires tell us about housing for the poor
MN: I had not then been to Kalihi, but I could easily picture it, and when later I did go there, that's how it was. I was reminded of this lesson this week by a fatal fire in Kalihi. According to the Star Advertiser:
"Residents say four families live in four sections of the house."
With Hawaii's low wages and high housing prices, you would expect the average number of persons per household to exceed the national average, and it does: 3.42 per family vs. 3.14 per family; and 2.89 vs. 2.58 per household.
Those numbers are much higher than when I first noticed the overcrowding in Kalihi. Twenty-five years ago, the average U.S. family size was just under 3.0, and Hawaii's was just over.
Hidden in those numbers are huge changes. For one thing, the only state with higher housing densities than Hawaii is California.
read ... The House is on Fire
Faleomavaega Moved from Tripler to the U.S.
SN: Congressman Faleomavaega Eni is scheduled to be moved next week from Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu to the mainland for further rehabilitation, his office said in a statement (issued Thursday Nov 14 Hawaii time), while emphasizing that the congressman is expected to make a full and complete recovery.
Faleomavaega was medivaced late last month to Tripler for further evaluation after arriving on island and being admitted to the LBJ Medical Center for three days, for an illness that his office has yet to make public....
“He will be moved from Tripler next week, and will return to either Utah or Washington DC, as he undergoes further rehab,” he said.
read ... Faleomavaega
But Ethanol sounded like such a great idea, didn’t it?
IM: In 2004-05 Hawaiian Electric Company started down its biofuel trajectory. At first they touted ethanol. HECO would later switch to tropical rainforest palm oil, then waste oil and then to Hawai`i-based biofuels.
In their 2005 Integrated Resource Planning document, HECO noted that “the use of liquid biofuel (e.g., ethanol and biodiesel) in electric power generating units represents a potential option for increasing HECO's renewable energy portfolio.”
Meanwhile Hawaii Congressman Neil Abercrombie advocated for converting Midwest yellow corn into green ethanol using offshore black fossil fueled based methane.
In 2005, Rep. Abercrombie supported the “National Energy Supply Diversification and Disruption Prevention Act” which would allow natural gas production in federal waters of the outer continental shelf.
read ... Ethanol
Rule changes threaten Waikiki beachboy businesses
HNN: Ocean recreation companies in Waikiki are protesting proposed new state fees and other rule changes they say threaten longtime beachboy concessions and other businesses.
"It's like they are trying to choke out the beachboys. They look at it more like how much can they make instead of (the impact on) the tradition of the beach boys," said Aaron 'Unity House' Rutledge, manager of Star Beachboys.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources is proposing to levy a 3 percent fee on all business generated by catamaran tours. It also wants to increase fees on surf board rentals from 10 cents per rental to $1.00....
The new rules also would repeal all operator permits -- while eliminating lifesaving training certifications -- required for all Waikiki surf board instructors, sailing instructors and catamaran and canoe captains.
That, said Rutledge, will open the door for unqualified "fly by night" companies to proliferate....
read ... Beachboy
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