Facing Reality: Hawaii's State Hospitals
Final Chapter In Judicial Selection Commission List Public Records Case
Religious Heritage of the Hawaiian Kingdom
Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted May 26, 2015
My father was a Tranny
Inside the Government’s Push to Regulate Short-Term Rental Industry
Kim's Enemies Time Coup to Maximize Embarrassment
HNN: It's become apparent that there was no smoking gun - no wrongdoing or inappropriate behavior. Her critics admit it was a matter of style. They complain she butted into their hearings...asking tough questions...basically being Donna Kim.
But she also got the job done. The session was almost over -- the deals made, the deadlines met...and the controversies smoothed over. The outcome of the final votes was assured...with the help of Senator Kim's leadership.
For that she deserved congratulation. Not humiliation.
But instead of waiting a few days for the appropriate face-saving moment...Senator Kim's enemies made their move while the whole state watched.
It happened on probably the only day in the entire year that all the television stations were at the capitol. All there to capture the moment she handed over the gavel.
In a place where important things usually happen behind closed doors, and protecting fragile egos is usually a priority... this was painfully public. It was clearly orchestrated to embarrass and humiliate Senator Kim....
Related: New Senate Boss Kouchi: Tough and Calculating Voice for Pro-Development Interests
read ... Donna Kim
70% of Legislative Seats Changed in Last 10 years
Borreca: Look at the state Legislature's cast of characters and you are likely to say, "We have seen this all before."
Although Rep. Joe Souki has been speaker of the House since just 2013, this is his second act. He also was speaker from 1993 to 1999.
The fellow who ran the House in between the Souki years, Rep. Calvin Say, swung the speaker's gavel for 13 years.
The latest Senate president, Ron Kouchi, has been in the Legislature for only five years, but he served 22 years on the Kauai County Council, including 12 as chairman.
The contradiction in this lineup of grizzled mugs is that most of faces have changed....
Between 2005 and 2015, 70 percent of the legislative seats changed.
A total of 15 of the Senate's 25 seats have someone new, compared with the 2005 cast of characters. In the House, 38 of the 51 faces are new.
To be fair, I have to explain that some of the faces leaving one legislative chamber popped up across the hall or over on the Honolulu City Council. Five of the nine Council members are actually former members of the state Legislature.
One state senator became governor, another became lieutenant governor and some tried for a new office and lost.
read ... A sea change is inevitable, even at the Legislature
Good government ‘no brainer’ bills fail
SA: The start of the 2015 legislative session showed promise: this year, a record-breaking 400-plus democracy-related bills were introduced. While some measures were more helpful in strengthening our democracy than others, the volume of democracy-related bills alone was enough for us to tread with cautious optimism.
Two “wins” worth noting relate to ethics and money-in-politics.
Senate Bill 996, introduced by Sen. Les Ihara, updates the state Ethics Commission’s filing platform so that all reports filed with the commission — including lobbyist expenditure forms, and public financial disclosure statements from elected officials and certain board and commission members — will be accessible via a new data system, That system will make it easier for citizens to conduct online search queries, and extract such data for analysis.
Sen. Laura Thielen introduced Senate Bill 508 that creates an additional filing for “super PACs,” which had attempted to manipulate voters. The Legislature recognized the need to make special interest “outside” money more transparent, especially given the unprecedented amount of big money that we saw flood our 2014 elections.
We had high hopes that other “no brainer” good-government bills would survive the Legislature, but that was not the case.
read ... No Brainer
Mainland 'Sex-Worker' Activists Push for Ige to Sign Soft-on-Pimps Law with Loophole for Child Sex Traffickers
CB: The problem with coercive criminal charging is that it is ineffective. (Translation: We want prostitution to be legal. And we are going to start with underage prostitution.) Most sex workers do not have pimps or traffickers, specifically one like the popular culture depiction seen in movies like “Taken.” And this includes young people engaged in sex work. In their extensive survey of over 300 youth engaged in street-based sex work in New York City, John Jay College professors Ric Curtis and Anthony Marcus found that only 14 percent of young women (In the study, young = 'under age', but we think we can get this by if we say 'young'.) worked for a “pimp” (And the underage boys with pimps? funny how the author didn't mention that data from the study.)
(Translation: National progressives once again making progress in Hawaii, the place to go when they need to break through for child molesters or pimps or both. They finally got a legislature to approve the law, will the Gov sign it?)
read ... Agenda: Trying to Normalize Prostitution
HPD worries about an increase in 'drugged' drivers
KITV: Lawmakers recently passed a bill that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Hawaii but some police departments think that it will lead to more drug-impaired drivers on the road.
read ... Drugs
Bumpy Kanahele Got $$$ from Movie 'Aloha' -- He Supports movie Even Though Walter Ritte Didn't Get Any Money out of it
SA: The long, tall pavilion with a peaked roof could have been a canoe hale if it weren't sitting high up in a mountain valley like an ark left by a receding flood. It had been left behind, actually, by the Hollywood production company that created it as a set for a luau in the Cameron Crowe film "Aloha," which opens Friday.
The valley is Pu‘uhonua o Waimanalo, nicknamed "Bumpy's Village" after Dennis "Bumpy" Kanahele, leader of the Nation of Hawaii, a sovereignty organization that leases the 45 acres from the state.
"The movie industry comes right in and then ‘poof!' they're gone, just like Cinderella," said Kanahele as he showed visitors the pavilion. Indeed, during the film's production the tall, hefty 60-year-old found himself transformed, as if in a fairy tale, into a screen actor playing himself.
"It deserves the name aloha," Kanahele said of the film, which he had seen in a private screening for local participants.
Others disagree.
"Aloha" has been criticized by some Native Hawaiians, including activist Walter Ritte (should've paid him), Hawaii State Film Commissioner Donne Dawson and tranny 'journalist' Mr. Janet Mock, for perpetuating what Dawson described as "a Hollywood stereotype, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of Hawaiians" through its use of a word whose deep spiritual meanings informed the Hawaiian Renaissance after a stirring 1970 speech by Pilahi Paki.
"The filmmakers should have asked permission to use a word that is sacred to us," Dawson said....
Totally Related: The Teamsters Production Unit: Jim Dooley connects dots thru Honolulu underworld
read ... Shake Down Clowns
'Environmentalism' Win Creates Unemployed People on Kaua'i
S20: DuPont Pioneer, the seed company that sells corn, sorghum, alfalfa, etc. and was considering expanding Kaua'i operations just a few years ago, has decided instead to close its Parent seed operations there. Like with astronomy, seed operations have been in Hawaii since the 1960s without issue.
But as we are also seeing in astronomy, the infiltration by unaffiliated haole activists into the Democratic Party organization and lower-level elected offices has gained a lot of ground against science since their arrival into Hawaii during the Obama campaign of 2008. They can now chalk up a victory over food and jobs, even though some of their food exports would not exist if they were not genetically modified....
Amfac Kauai Sugar pulled out years ago. We can assume environmentalists won't be happy until Dow, Syngenta and BASF are also gone and all 68,000 people on the island are employed bringing drinks and hula dancing for their rich mainland friends.
read ... science20.com
UH Mānoa budget: Revamped fiscal plan doesn’t impress everyone
KL: The public presentation was an effort by the administration to allow for increased transparency and accountability for students and faculty. Still, not all were pleased with the campus’s efforts.
“Announcement of the conversation is less than 24 hours in advance, making it hard to plan to attend,” said Marguerite Butler in a phone ca an associate professor in the UH Mānoa biology department and convener of I Mua Mānoa, a group that aims to improve the campus community. “And questions are not totally answered, we want to know college by college or research unit spending and they gave us aggregate data which came off as disingenuous.“
read ... doesn’t impress everyone
Gawad Kalinga Founder Slaps Down Silly UH Manoa PC Chatter
CNN: After getting flak for his alleged offensive speech at the University of Hawaii Center for Philippine Studies (UH-CPS) last month, Gawad Kalinga (GK) founder and philanthropist Tony Meloto on Tuesday (May 26) finally aired his side on the issue.
"It was a shock for me to hear about the negative report from University of Hawaii-Center for Philippine Studies (UH-CPS) 45 days after the event and this is the first time I've been called a "sexist," "elitist" and a person with "colonial mentality," which definitely I am not," said Meloto in an official statement posted on the GK site.
"I am deeply pained to read and hear about all that has been written, especially after hundreds of speeches in the Philippines and abroad, and after caring for the poor every day, protecting women and children and promoting pride as a Filipino everywhere I go in the last 20 years," he said.
Background: UH Manoa: Self-Righteous Pseudo Intellectuals Denounce Filipino who Builds Affordable Housing for the Poor
read ... Doer Slaps Down Talkers
Omidyar Website Thanks Republicans for Saving Obama Trade Deal from Senate Democrats Like Schatz and Hirono
CB: After a spate of high-volume bickering (ie just for show to the ignorant Dem base) between U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and President Barack Obama, the U.S. Senate has granted the president fast-track authority to complete the full draft of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Last Thursday, the Senate mustered 62 votes to end fast-track debate, and the next day completed passage of the negotiating request.
Civil Beat argued for this authority, and we see Friday’s vote as an important step forward. Though the conflict over fast track was hard fought and sometimes shrill, it promises to be nothing compared to the (pretend) battle to (pander to the base to) come, when the complete trade deal is made public later this year (but we're already for it, whatever it is....).
And that’s exactly, precisely as it should be (all for show to silly little progressives who actually think this is real).
read ... That's The Way it Should Be
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