World AIDS Day: Gay Inc Drops HIV for Marriage, Military & Money
Food Activism: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Anti-GMO Activist: “I Cater to a Very Wealthy Clientele”
Reductio ad Monsantium
Gays Recycling Civil Unions Couples Because Nobody Wants a Gay Marriage
OT: A midnight ceremony at the Sheraton Waikiki hotel will include three of the couples who first legalized their relationships in civil unions in 2012. They will be joined by three additional couples.
read ... On Top
Unitarian Cluster: One Gay Groom is Roommate of Another's Gay Groom
AP: Six couples at a Waikiki resort tied the knot early Monday, exchanging vows side-by-side with one another in front of a few hundred guests shortly after midnight, while even more couples watched and waited their turn.
Across town, an openly gay Unitarian minister (Rev Jonipher Kwong) wed his (living in Calif) partner of (sort of) 15 years in a ceremony attended by clergy who pushed for the new law, plus Gov. Neil Abercrombie, who called the special legislative session that led to the law.
Saralyn and Isajah Morales began filling out license applications a few minutes after midnight along with other couples. Several license agents huddled around four laptops in a tiny conference room, refreshing their web browsers to coax a state-run website to load. A few feet away, wedding guests sipped champagne, dined on curried shrimp and portabella mushroom sliders, listened to piano music and took pictures with each of seven cakes on display for the occasion. (Priorities: The State can make this website work but can't make the Obamacare website work.)
Couples who walked in to register on the spot posed with a three-tiered centerpiece cake, adorned with pink and white roses.
"Next!" Keola Akana exclaimed after being the first of the group to complete the license application with his groom, Ethan Wung.
read ... Cluster or Circle?
More Recycling: Lesbians Already 'Married' in Arkansas Come to Hawaii to Do it Again with Plenty of Media
PBN: One couple planning to marry in the islands is Cira Abiseid and Cyrilla Owle. Last month, they celebrated their union in a ceremony with family and friends at home in Conway, Ark. But since their home state doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, Owle says they're now going to Hawaii to make it official.
read ... Running out of Gays who want pretend marriages
Budget; Caldwell Scheming to Justify massive Tax Hikes
CB: Budget talks for Fiscal Year 2015 are already taking place inside Honolulu Hale, and the conversation isn’t pretty.
The city is facing a projected $156 million shortfall in the coming year, which has caused Mayor Kirk Caldwell to institute a strict spending cap on all departments. There’s already a $28 million deficit in the current fiscal year, which began July 1, and that has already resulted in some cuts.
How Caldwell aims to shrink the 2015 deficit is outlined in an August memo recently released.... (below)
Unless new spending is legally required or is one of Caldwell’s personal priorities it’s unlikely to make it into the budget.
The tension over budget priorities and spending can be seen in the recent dustup between the Caldwell administration and the Honolulu Ethics Commission over restrictions placed on the agency’s budget
read ... $156 Million Short? Honolulu Mayor Keeping Budget in Check
Uninsured Fret About Getting Health Coverage By New Year's Day
HPR: Tambra Momi has been eagerly awaiting the promise of guaranteed health insurance.
Since 2011, she has battled Dercum's disease, a rare and painful condition in which noncancerous tumors sprout throughout her body, pressing against nerves.
Jobless and in a wheelchair, Momi needs nine different drugs, including one costing $380 a month, to control the pain and side effects. No insurer has been willing to cover her, she says, except a few that have taken her money and then refused to pay for her medications.
Yet her effort to sign up for the health law's coverage has been painful in its own way....
read ... About a website that apparently isn't as important as the gay marriage website
Star-Adv: Curb Free Speech so Old Boys Won't Win Any More Elections
SA: the noise in the political arena (Noise = Speech not approved by progressives) has grown louder through the participation of nonprofit entities known by the section of the tax code that authorized them: 501(c)4.
Now, at last the Obama administration has moved to constrain these groups. New rules proposed by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service would rein in the political activities of these nonprofits, categorized as "social welfare organizations," in an effort to ensure that their work is primarily social welfare and not politics. The rule should be fully vetted, but it suggests a viable first step toward bringing one sector of campaign funding under control. (finishing off the old boys)
This issue became a pointed concern locally in the 2012 elections. To cite the most prominent example: A 501(c)4 called Pacific Resource Partnership conducted a high-profile campaign for Honolulu's rail project and against its leading opponent in the mayoral race, former Gov. Ben Cayetano.
The "social welfare" component of its mission is encapsulated in its website "About PRP" section, in which it's self-described "as an advocate for unionized construction and an influential resource for management."
That role allows PRP "to bridge these traditional divides to successfully lead efforts that sustain the health of the building industry."
Even if one accepts that as a form of social welfare, in practical terms the organization was far more political during the 2012 election cycle. (And it is intolerable that our progressives aren't able to win everything.)
read ... Curb abuses of 501(c)4 status
Kakaako Developer Cites Excuses for Unaffordable Housing
SA: Most of what Sam Aiona described ("801 South St. project is not 'workforce housing'," Star-Advertiser, Island Voices, Nov. 27) falls in the category of "reserve housing," which under HCDA rules is a government extraction....
A "workforce housing project" like 801 South St. falls into a different category of affordable housing.
The units offered for sale to low and moderate-income buyers are not extractions by government. Instead, the developer is induced to voluntarily offer 75 percent of its units at affordable prices, with no government subsidies, because of the higher density allowance granted by HCDA....
To further meet the demand that exists in our community, we hope to secure HCDA approval to build a second tower with 410 additional units, all of which will be priced to be affordable to households earning 140 percent of area median income or less.
read ... Unaffordable
CCA Behind Abercrombie Prison Building Binge
CB: Pacific Business News reports that a major private corrections company is "very interested" in helping Hawaii solve its prison overcrowding problem by building new prisons here.
It's the same company, Corrections Corporation of America, that houses hundreds of Hawaii prisoners in its Arizona facilities.
"We're interested in the construction and financing of a facility (as well)," CCA spokesman Steve Owen told PBN last month. "Out-of-state placement of inmates is not an ideal permanent solution, (although) it is a viable tool to take away overcrowding and provide inmates solutions to get back into the workforce."
CCA certainly has a lot of experience running prisons. But a lot of it is the kind of experience Hawaii could do without....
Meanwhile back at the local prisons run by UPW, Inc: Lawsuit: Halawa Guard Organized Vicious USO Family Gang Assault
read ... Same Player, Same Game
Propose Amnesty from Prosecution for Calling 911 to Report Drug Overdose
KITV: "With narcotics you can have an overdose situation that can be quickly reversed. A lethal situation can be quickly reversed with medical attention," said Dr. Rosen.
But many aren't making that life-saving call.
"People won't call 911 if there is drug paraphernalia about and there is always paraphernalia around," said "Bud," who lives on the streets of Chinatown.
"Our data shows that about 70 percent of the people who witnessed an overdose did not call 911 for fear of arrest or prosecution," said Heather Lusk with the Community Health Outreach Work to prevent HIV/AIDS program (CHOW Project).
Seventeen other states have amnesty bills that would offer those who call 911 during a medical emergency protection from prosecution, but Hawaii doesn't. Efforts to pass a measure failed this legislative session, but supporters will give it another shot in January.
"The bill wouldn't give amnesty to drug traffickers or people you are concerned about. It would allow folks who are around but are afraid to call 911, because of drug paraphernalia or other drugs, to be able to save a life - by calling 911," said Lusk.
read ... Medical amnesty measure prepared for legislative session
Meth Awareness Week
KGI: Hawaii’s youth are taking methamphetamine prevention into their own hands.
The Hawaii Meth Project has several events planned statewide to coincide with the first national Meth Awareness Week from Nov. 30 through Dec. 7. The events are aimed at discouraging first-time use of methamphetamine — which is considered a more serious drug today than cocaine and marijuana combined.
read ... Awareness
Another Enviro Babbles About Swimming With Sharks
SA: I have friends who think that because I swam with hundreds of sharks in the Tuamotus last spring, I'm exceptionally brave. But I wasn't comfortable swimming with those sharks because I'm daring: It's because I've learned to tell one species from another. And when it comes to swimming with sharks, species is everything.
The sharks I snorkeled with in the South Pacific were nearly all coral reef residents: white-tip reef shark, black-tip reef shark and gray reef shark. All three, also found in Hawaii, sometimes eat octopus and squid but mostly eat reef fish, and unless people are crowding them or spearing fish around them, reef sharks aren't interested in humans.
Of the 400 or so shark species, the three most dangerous to people are bull sharks (not found in Hawaii), great whites (offshore and rare here) and tiger sharks, the species responsible for most bites in Hawaii.
read ... Propaganda
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