Bill Burgess: Honolulu attorney fought race-exclusive programs
Hawaii State Judiciary “Connect-A-Vet” resource fair
Triple Referral Lateral
Could You Please Pick Up That Pencil?
Hawaii: Assault on your Second Amendment Rights Continues
Clumsy and Secretive: Caldwell’s Minions Mug Ethics Director
Shapiro: …The city Ethics Commission’s stated purpose “is to improve and maintain public confidence in government officials and employees.”
Commissioners are doing the opposite with their clumsy and secretive mugging of longtime Executive Director Chuck Totto, breeding distrust about the actions and motives of city officials — starting with themselves.
Since mid-2015, the commission has been mired in distraction as new members appointed by Mayor Kirk Caldwell first tried to muzzle Totto and now seem intent on firing him.
Caldwell has had it in for Totto since he raised ethical questions about the mayor’s 2013 inaugural luau, which was financed with $400,000 from private donors, many of whom had major business before the city.
Caldwell’s minions have since squeezed the Ethics Commission’s budget, attempted to limit the commission’s authority, issued competing ethics rulings and stonewalled investigations of ethical lapses by city employees.
It seems no coincidence the commission, whose support Totto previously enjoyed, began targeting him after Caldwell gained a controlling bloc with his appointment of three former judges — Victoria Marks, Riki May Amano and Allene Suemori.
The discord became public after Totto questioned the validity of City Council votes on rail that were taken after Council members accepted substantial undisclosed gifts from rail interests….
read … Backroom push to silence ethics director lacks class
Thousands of Punatics, Anti-GMOs Joining Hawaii Democratic Party to Vote for Socialist
Borreca: In Hawaii, there has been a huge surge in Democratic party membership, with observers thinking the flood of new members will be Sanders’ supporters.
Stephanie Ohigashi, the Democratic chairwoman, said the party has grown by 5,700 since December.
“We are looking at big surges on the neighbor islands and some Oahu districts,” Ohigashi said in an interview. She pointed to the Pearl City to Manoa areas as also showing rapid Democratic growth.
“We saw a steady increase from December on. It was a regular pace of maybe two to three hundred a day, but when the Republican caucus was held, it went to a thousand a day,” Ohigashi said.
Other Democratic political observers are saying that a last minute jump in membership “bodes well for Sanders.”
The thinking is that Clinton is likely to do well with the party establishment members who are older and not so plugged into social media.
“We are seeing new members who are coming because of the social media campaigns by the millennial generation,” Ohigashi said.
Sanders organizers in Hawaii say they are concentrating their push for Sanders supporters to attend Saturday’s preference poll via Facebook and other social media outlets with a strong emphasis in getting new voters on the neighbor islands.
Ohigashi said the party figures show there have been big increases in membership on Kauai’s North Shore and the Big Island’s lower Puna district.
“The highest jump was in the Big Island’s 4th House District (Puna), where we registered 500 new members in one day,” Ohigashi said….
While some observers are expecting maybe 25,000 Democrats to show up, Ohigashi said she thinks the vote will top the record-setting 38,000 that voted in the Clinton versus Barack Obama contest in 2008.
Back then, the party ran out of ballots and some votes were cast on hastily scribbled pieces of paper. This year, Ohigashi said she has printed 100,000 ballots, just in case.
Ohigashi said she doesn’t have a firm number for total party membership, because some members are double counted, but figures the Democrats have about 70,000 members….
SA: Democratic Party set for White House poll
Photos: Large Group Greets Jane Sanders in Honolulu
Read: Bernie Sanders ‘Women Fantasize about being raped’
read … Jump in party membership looks hopeful for Sanders
Kauai Fact-Finding: Anti-GMO Pesticide Hype Completely Unsubstantiated
SA: …The authors of the joint fact-finding draft report reviewed more than 100 published studies on the effects of pesticide exposure and concluded that the current literature does not demonstrate a cause-effect relationship between pesticide use on the island and environmental and health effects.
They also found “the Kauai health data examined does not show any causal relationship between the pesticides used by the seed companies and the health problems experienced by the Westside or any part of Kauai.” The same was true for the environmental health effects: “There is no statistically significant evidence that shows causality between seed company pesticide use and harms to Kauai’s flora and fauna.”
The joint fact-finding group was tasked to look beyond individual stories and anecdotes to compile relevant data. They asked insightful questions. They wanted to know if there were any detectable and measurable impacts on human or environmental health specifically associated with seed company pesticide practices. They wanted to see evidence.
They sought answers by first understanding the “footprint” of Kauai’s seed companies. They also wanted to know about the quantities of pesticides used by seed companies. In the spirit of cooperation, the seed crop companies shared a significant amount of information.
The draft report shows that the actual footprint of the four seed crop companies operating on Kauai is relatively modest….
SA: Anti-GMO Lawyer Whines About the Report
read … About the People Now Joining the Democratic Party
Are you participating in Hawaii’s main political party caucuses to choose a presidential nominee?
C. No (261 Votes) – 66%
B. Yes, I will take part in the upcoming Democratic caucus (77 Votes) – 20%
A. Yes, I took part in the recent GOP caucus (54 Votes) -- 14%
read … Are you participating
Wife of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visits Oahu
KHON: …She will host an invitation-only veterans’ roundtable with Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard at 3 p.m. (Sunday March 19) at Disabled Veterans of America, Tommy Kakesako Hall, 2685 N. Nimitz Highway.
At 5 p.m., the public is invited to a meet-and-greet with Sanders at Church of the Crossroads, 1212 University Ave….
read … Jane Sanders
NYT: UH Lags Private Sector in Equal Pay, Womens’ Rights
DC: …For those of you working in the technology industry, the wage gap has disappeared. According to a new survey from Dice Media, when you factor in years of experience on the job, “average salaries are equal for male and female tech pros.” “When it comes to technology employment, it’s a skills-driven marketplace,” says Dice senior VP Tom Silver. “The ability to apply that know-how to a given problem remains the core of employment — why tech professionals get hired and how they are compensated.” Which makes sense — except in the world of academia, where apparently the old boys club is alive and well.
In a piece in last week’s New York Times, A. Hope Jahren, a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii, describes how women in the STEM fields of academia — science, technology, engineering and math — are regularly subject to sexual harassment from their male colleagues, including and especially their superiors. She cites an e-mail recently sent by one of her most talented former students, forwarded from a senior male colleague. “All I know is that from the first day I talked to you, there hasn’t been a single day or hour when you weren’t on my mind . . . I couldn’t believe the things I was compelled to do for you . . . That’s just the way things are and you’re gonna have to deal with me until one of us leaves.”
In most business environments, this kind of e-mail would merit an immediate intervention by the HR department, and perhaps a dismissal. But Jahren says that academia is different. “The scientific method may be impartial, but the scientific culture is not. From grad-school admission on up through tenure, every promotion can hinge on a recommendation letter’s one key passage of praise, offered — or withheld — by the most recent academic adviser.” …
read … Liberal universities lag in equal pay and women’s rights
Financial woes threaten the UH Cancer Center
SA: …the center is struggling to secure long-term funding from the state Legislature to help offset this year’s $7 million operating deficit and future shortfalls. Adding to its fiscal woes, UH opened a $130 million facility in Kakaako in 2013 and issued bonds to pay for the building, saddling the center with a nearly $8 million annual mortgage payment.
The center’s financial troubles stem in large part from an outdated business plan that assumed the university’s share of the state’s cigarette tax would remain constant at around $20 million a year. But as fewer people smoke, tax revenues have fallen to about $14 million annually. Turmoil surrounding the center’s previous leadership and the negative publicity that ensued also significantly affected philanthropy and recruitment of top scientists.
Former Cancer Center director Michele Carbone, who resigned in 2014 amid complaints about his management and growing fiscal concerns, said the organization raised $25 million during his tenure from 2009 to 2013. That dropped to less than $2 million in 2014.
“People didn’t want to donate to us anymore because of the negative (publicity),” said Carbone, who remains a top researcher at the center. “After that I wasn’t able to hire anybody. That went down, the cigarette tax went down, UH got a new president and chancellor, and the priorities of the university changed. Clearly it’s not a priority.”
As a result, UH officials are petitioning for $5 million in continuing state support to help it recover from its crippling deficit that has polarized lawmakers, faculty and current and former supporters. To stay afloat, the center has been using money from its cigarette tax reserve fund, which is expected to have about $24 million at the end of the 2016 fiscal year and be depleted in a few years.
If the organization doesn’t get the financial support it needs, it risks losing its federal research designation — and the millions of dollars that come with it — and likely could not survive, said Jerris Hedges, the Cancer Center’s interim director and dean of the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine….
read … Part 1 of 3
Required testing of rape kits removed from bills
SA: …Both House Bill 1907 and Senate Bill 2309 were amended this week, at the request of the Honolulu prosecutor’s office, to instead require the Attorney General’s Office to compile a report on untested rape kits throughout the counties to determine how many there are, why they weren’t tested, potential funding sources and how best to reduce the inventory of kits….
read … Tested?
HB2391: Release Hundreds of Criminals Back onto Streets
SA: Under House Bill 2391, inmates could be released so long as they have not been arrested, charged with or convicted of certain crimes, including serious or violent crimes, abuse of family or household members, or offenses with bail set at more than $5,000….
HB 2391 would revive the public safety director’s authority to release some offenders, which became law in 1993 and expired in 2001. That law was passed when the Hawaii prison system was sued in 1984 in connection with overcrowded and alleged unconstitutional conditions, and the state entered into a federal consent decree that imposed population caps on jails.
Honolulu Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro opposes HB 2391, saying the bill as written would possibly permit the release of defendants who could create a dangerous situation for victims.
The prosecutor’s office said that the term “violent offenses” is not clearly defined in the bill, which leaves it to the Department of Public Safety to decide what is “violent.” …
Attorney General Douglas Chin, who supports the measure, is recommending the program be in place for three to five years. Meanwhile, the state plans to build new facilities, which would further reduce crowding and, we would hope, eliminate the need for early release.
Already, there is movement toward funding construction of those facilities. In the budget that the state House of Representatives sent to the Senate, $200 million in capital improvement funds was inserted for a new Maui jail, a project that dates back to 2004. The jail location has been determined and the design work is done.
But lawmakers have only inserted $60 million for the design and construction of a new Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC) on the grounds of the Halawa Correctional Facility — nowhere near the $489.3 million in funding that Ige is seeking.
Ige had hoped to move OCCC and revitalize the Kalihi area with transit-oriented development, since rail construction is headed toward the area.
(Translation: Threatening to release the criminals is a negotiating tactic by the Ige administration.)
HB2391: Text, Status
read … Early release of ‘nonviolent’ offenders can ease crowding
Medicated: Another 1,800 Sign Up to Smoke Weed
HTH: Whoever is selected to open the state’s first medical marijuana dispensaries this summer should have plenty of business, state Department of Health records indicate.
At the end of February, there were more than 1,800 additional people registered as medical cannabis patients than in January 2015, the first month the DOH began overseeing the program. Broken down, that’s about a 16 percent increase between last month, when 13,244 unduplicated patients were registered, and 14 months ago, when the registry was about 11,402 people.
Between September and October alone, the number of patients increased by nearly 600 and in Hawaii County, which has more patients than anywhere else in the state, the number increased from 4,998 in October to 5,330 at the end of December….
In recent months, however, the DOH has taken steps to make the process more efficient. In December, the department introduced an electronic application process which expedites the registration period from weeks, as it previously took, into just days.
“Certainly we’ve been working really hard to make it easier for people,” DOH spokeswoman Janice Okubo said….
read … Keeping the people doped up
Affordable? Senior Housing Rents Jump 62%
SA: …Seniors living in Waimanalo kupuna housing were upset, angered and confused after receiving notices that their rent is going up on May 1 — some by as much as 62 percent.
One retired couple living on a fixed income got a letter from Locations, the property management company, saying that their rent will jump to $1,047 from $645.
The letters, received March 3, announced rent hikes ranging from $53 to $402 for a one-bedroom apartment at Kulanakauhale Maluhia O Na Kupuna….
The project must be kept affordable for 30 years, but the investors may leave the project after 15 years, which is in two years, Awaya said. Investors who bought into the project took advantage of tax credits….
The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands owns the land beneath the buildings. Residents must be Native Hawaiian, and the minimum age is 55 (lowered from 62).
read … Not Affordable
City says North Shore playground built by volunteers must come down
KHON: … Parents who visit the playground every day with their children said the structure that includes two slides and several swings has been there for at least a year.
The city, however, says it doesn’t conform to safety standards, so the Parks and Recreation department posted a notice letting the community know it would have to come down by April 15.
Parent Kristin Klein said “I think it’s a shame. I think there are a lot of kids out here who love this park, and play every day, so anything to keep it a part of the community would be great.”
A city spokesperson told KHON2 the structure does not conform to city regulations, one of the issues being that it’s not anchored to the ground, and could blow over. And the city can’t allow individuals to install permanent structures in city parks.
“It brings so much joy to all the children,” said parent Alexis Bilderback, “that we wish that we would be able to maintain something like this, if not this permanent structure, then some other permanent structure children can enjoy.”
While the area belongs to the city, it’s not an official park and has no amenities. So to install a playground, this land would have to be designated as a mini park, which would require community input.
Community members can also raise funds and make a gift to the city to build a playground. For example, Niu Valley residents raised more than $77,000 to donate to the city to build a playground in their community. That process took over 10 years ….
read … Mindless Bureaucracy
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