Another Anti-GMO Leader Apologizes: "The authorities I trusted in were wrong"
Ethics Comm: Mitsunaga Showers DoT Engineer with Free Golf, Flights, Oakleys and Rolex
HSTA, Hotel Workers Sign Open Letter Calling for Kakaako Development Moratorium
Lack of Transparency Leads Many to Ask: Who Has Connections to CGI?
Maui Pesticide Bill Would Fine Farmers, Landscapers $10K per Day
Young Legislators Launch Hawaii Future Caucus
Ethics Comm Fines Non-Responsive Elevator Commission Board Member
$125M/Year for Abercrombie's Preschool Voucher Scheme
SA: The plight of about 5,000 youngsters who are falling into the educational gap — too young for regular public school now that the Department of Education is (forced to) disbanding its junior kindergarten program — highlights the need for high-quality, affordable preschool programs in Hawaii.... (Step 1 -- create artificial crisis)
The subsidies will be available for application this spring through the state's Preschool Open Doors program, but they are estimated to serve only about one-fifth of those children affected by junior kindergarten's elimination. This adds new urgency to the question... (Thus creating artificial pressure for constitutional amendment providing a) program that could cost taxpayers $125 million a year....
read ... It's not day care, it's a tax hike
Foster parent to sue over low payment
SA: A class-action lawsuit is expected to be filed today against the state, alleging it has failed to pay foster parents enough to adequately care for their foster children.
The suit will be filed by a sole foster parent, Raynette Nalani Ah Chong of Kahaluu, on behalf of more than 1,000 Hawaii foster parents, who haven't had their reimbursement payments increased since 1990.
The federal Child Welfare Act requires that reimbursements cover the expenses of children in foster care, but the $529 monthly payment does not come close, said Victor Geminiani, executive director of Hawaii Appleseed Center for Law and Economic Justice.
Even though Hawaii has the highest cost of living in the country, it is one of the stingiest as far as taking care of foster children, Geminiani said. Had the payment been adjusted for inflation, he said, it would be more than $950.
read ... Foster Parents
Atheist Complaints About Final Salute to Buttons Kaluhiokalani
Ian Lind: This headline from a story in Saturday’s Star-Advertiser struck me as odd and inappropriate for a news story. The story reported a memorial gathering of family and friends where the ashes of Hawaii surfer “Buttons” Kaluhiokalani were scatted in the ocean in Waikiki.
Surfer returns to sea for eternity
Eternity? Really?
It seems to me that “eternity” in this context is a term more suited for theology and religion than reporting news.
read ... “Eternity” doesn’t belong in headline
Not Slowed by Scandal: The Same Companies Keep Snagging Huge Federal Contracts in Hawaii
CB: The federal government spent $159 billion in contracts in Hawaii over the past 10 years. From that pool of money, the top 10 corporate contractors secured at least $200 million apiece since 2003, with two of them crossing the $1 billion threshold. That's according to eight years of data from the Census Bureau's Consolidated Federal Funds Report and two years of data from USASpending.gov, a government-run website that replaced the Census reporting system.
Not surprisingly, the lion's share of the money Hawaii receives annually is for military projects like jet fuel, ship repair, housing upgrades for troops based in Hawaii and other defense expenditures....
Nan's extraordinary success in garnering federal contracts since it was founded in 1995 prompted a 2003 federal investigation that culminated in owner Patrick Shin pleading guilty to submitting false documents to inflate the cost of a federally contracted repair job by $380,000. Shin was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine and sentenced to three years of probation and 12 days in federal prison, according to a 2006 Star-Bulletin story.
But the scandal doesn't appear to have slowed down Nan's ascent. The company got $70 million in federal funds last year and $102 million the year before....
read ... The Same Companies Keep Snagging Huge Federal Contracts in Hawaii
Seemingly conflicting plans at UH upset key legislator
Borreca: For state Rep. Isaac Choy, the last straw came last week while reading the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
Two stories in one day by sports report Ferd Lewis sent Choy, chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, over the top.
The first story detailed how budget problems are causing the University of Hawaii Board of Regents to consider cancelling some sports at the flagship Manoa campus. The second story revealed how Rockne Freitas, chancellor at UH-West Oahu, wants to launch a NCAA Division II athletic program with up to 10 sports in two years.
"Are there other people out there who see the lunacy in the most recent news coming out of the University of Hawaii?" asks Choy in the lead article for his newsletter to his Manoa constituents.
No fan of the governance at UH, Choy is upset because UH already has too many problems with its newest campus.
"West Oahu moved into its new campus just a year ago missing a whole building because it ran out of money, has a huge debt payment coming up, and does not have enough money to sustain ongoing education programs," Choy wrote.
In an interview Monday, Choy also said he didn't like the UH regents' plans to deal with the backlogged, nearly $500 million in needed repairs. UH last week said it would stop new construction while it plowed money into fixing old and neglected buildings, mostly at Manoa. But then it exempted $170 million in new construction from the freeze.
"I wanted a complete moratorium on all buildings not yet started," said Choy. "There should be no exemption list. They have exemptions for buildings that have no plans, no appropriation and no permits."
read ... Seemingly conflicting plans at UH upset key legislator
DoH: 179 Same Sex Marriage Applications
HNN: In a statement from the Department of Health: "As of 3 p.m. Monday, the Hawai'i State Department of Health had received 179 online applications for marriage licenses for same-sex couples. Of the 179 licenses, 46 of the couples were married today and had their marriages registered by the department. Of the 179 marriage license applications, 49 of the couples identified one or both people as non-residents, and 130 of the couples were both residents of Hawaii."... (All this for how few?)
With State Representative Chris Lee's help, Knott brought Dole to the Capitol under the guise they were going on a tour. "We got to the House floor and Travis turned and dropped to his knee, and I was like ‘What are you doing? Look where we are! There are people around!' and he started to propose and from then on I just started literally shaking. After 20 years I was completely blown away," described Dole.
read ... Political Demonstration Weddings
Big Island's Anti-GMO Bill 113: It's Not 'Who' Is Right, It's 'What' Is Right
HuffPo: It's not "us against them." It's not "GMO against organic." It isn't "who" is right, so much as it is "what" is right.
It's significant that a group of farmers and ranchers who, between them, grow 90 percent of the food produced on the Big Island island, have banded together to say the same thing: We need to think this through more carefully.
These farmers and ranchers opposed Bill 113 because the bill was rushed and its consequences were not considered. We didn't take the time to think it all through and come to the best decision for everyone.
Bill 113 looks through a very narrow prism; there is a much bigger picture that is not being considered.
read ... Will Kenoi Veto?
Jessica Wooley Wants to Redefine Agriculture, Sink Farmers
HFD: At this last meeting something very peculiar happened. Jill Tokuda and Ikaika Anderson’s representative attended as usual and are very regular in their participation to notify the community of what’s going on and what they are working on. The others like Clayton Hee, Cynthia Thielen, and Ken Ito, are non-existent. Jessica Wooley will send a representative twice but never attended it herself since June. At this past month’s meeting, no one on the board recognized her, and as a result, and mistook her for another presenter.
She did a quick report on what she plans to do as the agriculture chair. Basically she wants to redefine what agriculture means in Hawaii, referring to calling it the growing of food. I asked her what she will be doing to help farmers. She also talked about attempting to get that label on biotech derived foods and stated, “there is no regulation” on it. Of course she continued stating that consumers should be able to know and that papaya farmers are already doing it for export and it won’t shouldn’t affect them by doing it here. She did also state that, “I would not ban GMOs.”
read ... About Mainlanders in the Legislature
HELCO delays geothermal contract in Push for Lower Prices
HTH: The Hawaii Electric Light Co. says awarding a contract for another 50 megawatts of geothermal power will take more time.
But how long remains unclear.
The utility was initially expecting to make a selection among the six companies that submitted proposals by September.
It later pushed that timeline to the end of November.
That deadline was missed, and HELCO Administration Manager Rhea Lee said Monday that a new date is in the process of being determined.
“We want to make sure that geothermal that we add will not be tied to the price of oil because we do want to lower the electrical rates for the customers. It’s not an easy decision.”
Twenty-five of the 38 mgw of geothermal power HELCO buys from Puna Geothermal Venture, the only existing geothermal plant in the state, is tied to the cost of oil.
Additionally, HELCO is still talking to some of if its independent power producers about renegotiating contracts to detach the cost of buying the electricity from the price of oil, Lee said. Those producers include companies like PGV that sell power to the utility. Lee said she could also not discuss details about those talks.
“I can say that some are willing to talk with us and are talking with us,” she said. “Some are not.”
Those talks began last year.
read ... HELCO delays geothermal contract
Enviros Try to Block Waste to Energy
HTH: Resolution 123, sponsored by Kohala Councilwoman Margaret Wille, is a 2 1/4-page document that urges the mayor to explore all solid waste technologies rather than limiting his choice to waste-to-energy. It also stresses a solid waste program that emphasizes waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. The council committee unanimously agreed with the nonbinding resolution earlier this year before sending it to the commission.
read ... Willie Lining the Pockets of Recycling Contractors
Biofuel Industry on Big Island Fails To Follow Through on Big Plans of 2008
EH: The biofuel boon has gone bust – at least on the island of Hawai`i. As we report in our lead article, just five years ago folks were fighting to lay claim to state lands where they could grow crops for eventual conversion into fuel of one or another kind.
Nary an acre of state land has been given over to such projects, while managers of private land that have been planted with the intention of providing feed stock to a biomass power plant are now shipping their mature trees to Asia, awaiting the say when the plant is up and running. That day, as we report elsewhere in this issue, may yet be some distance off.
read ... Biofool Bust
Food Nazis Drive Hawaii to Eat Spam
HP: My own love for Spam began when I was about 10. My mother was what my friends called "a health nut." She made my brother and I bring our brown bread sandwiches and apple and carrot lunches from home to Punahou School. But on the days the cafeteria served the then-favorite Punahou student lunch, fried Spam with rice and gravy, we would beg my mother for money to buy lunch. Of course, we didn't tell her it was Spam day. If she found out Punahou served Spam, she probably would have transferred us to another school.
I continued to love Spam through my teen years. I kept my small black horse named Smoky at the stables in Kapiolani Park where the archery range is today. On Saturdays, I liked to walk from the stables to an okazuya on Monsarrat Avenue where I purchased -- for a quarter -- a Spam sandwich on white bread slathered with French's bright yellow mustard and carefully wrapped in waxed paper by the elderly Japanese counterwoman. I would return to the stables to fetch my horse to ride up the backside of Diamond Head to a secluded spot for a picnic where I privately relished my Spam sandwich looking down at the ocean while my horse munched on kiawe beans.
read ... Reaction to overbearing health nuts
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