Hanabusa Flees HART, is Replaced by Contractor
Kelii Akina for OHA Launches new Radio Ad
Hawaii Health Insurance Premiums Growing Faster than Most States
OHA is State’s 170th-Largest ‘Business’
Two Finalists named for UH Manoa chancellor
City acquires 24-unit apartment building to house homeless
OHA Races Offer Stark Choices
CB: …The ideological differences couldn’t be more stark in the two races for seats on the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees.
They feature incumbents who believe OHA is doing a good job and two well-known challengers who argue very much the opposite. One even heads an organization that has sued to stop OHA-funded efforts to create a Native Hawaiian governing entity….
Trask gave Lindsey a political wake-up call by edging him by 3,200 votes in the primary. Craig Kahui, the other candidate, picked up 21,000 votes in a race that saw 150,000 people vote.
In the at-large contest, longtime incumbent Haunani Apoliona, a former OHA chair, received twice as many votes as the second-place finisher, Kelii Akina, or about 61,000 votes to 32,000. But five other candidates drew a combined 55,000 votes.
Akina and Apoliona each hope those others votes will go their way this time. And all four candidates would love to convince the 100,000-plus voters who skipped the OHA races in the primary to reconsider this time around….
read … Choices
Star-Adv Publisher Claims He Was Listed as Caldwell Supporter by Mistake
CB: The Kirk Caldwell campaign said on Thursday it may have been tricked into listing the name of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s publisher as one of the people who supports the mayor’s re-election bid.
The campaign told Civil Beat it has apologized to the newspaper’s president and publisher, Dennis Francis, after his name showed up in a two-page campaign ad in his own newspaper on Sunday.
Campaign chair Lex Smith said volunteers had set up an email system asking people to send in names to be included in a list of supporters.
“A few questionable submissions” were removed from the list before it was published, Smith said. But Francis’ name made it through….
read … Uh-huh
Hawaii Permanent Political Class: Democrats Prepare to Elect Son of Broken Trust Tweeker
SA: District 29 (Chinatown-Iwilei-Kalihi-Palama): This race seems to be Democrat Daniel Holt’s for the taking, after Karl Rhoads vacated the seat to run for the Senate office vacated by Suzanne Chun Oakland. Holt prevailed over four other Democrats in the primary, and he should easily prevail against Republican rival Kaiwiola Coakley, a missionary and public service worker. Born and raised in Kalihi, Holt is a former Kalihi-Palama Neighborhood Board chairman. He also is politically well-connected: he is the Senate’s assistant sergeant-at-arms, was legislative director for then-Senate President Donna Mercado Kim in 2012-14, and his father is (criminal) former Sen. Milton Holt.
1996: Senators on Ice “between 1993 and 1997, ex-Senator Holt, an employee of the Bishop Estate, ran up $21,000 in charges at casinos and strip joints on a Bishop Estate credit card. Many of the charges on the credit card were for cash advances. When asked, trustee Lokelani Lindsey basically said that it was no big deal because Milton had paid back the estate. (Sound familiar?) But, turns out the money Milton used to pay back the estate came from the estate in the form of a retroactive pay raise!”
read … Impunity
One Party State: 25 Legislators Unopposed
CB: Despite 65 seats up for election Nov. 8 in the Hawaii Legislature, only a handful of races are expected to be even remotely competitive in this Democrat-dominated state.
Twenty-five candidates are unopposed and six Democrats have no Republican challenger, making them likely shoo-ins given that the Libertarian and Green parties have never won a state legislative seat.
In other races, incumbents are facing first-time candidates who lack campaign funds and name recognition….
read … Unopposed
32% of UH Students Graduate in 4 Years
HNN: In a preliminary report to the Board of Regents last week, officials said four-year graduation rates have skyrocketed at UH-Manoa, from 17.5 percent in 2011 to 32.1 percent in 2015.
UH officials are crediting a series of programs aimed at bolstering the graduation rate, including the "15 to Finish" program, which encourages students to take at least 15 credits every semester to graduate in four years….
read … UH-Manoa sees 'amazing increase' in grad rates
Obama Vacation May Have Contributed to Deadly Marine Helo Crash
MC: Before the Obama family's annual two-week vacation last December in Kailua, Hawaii, the Secret Service put in place a series of standard security measures, including a temporary regional flight restriction affecting Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463, stationed less than five miles away at Kaneohe Bay.
But unlike past years, this year found HMH-463 in crisis.
The unit, the only squadron of CH-53E Super Stallion choppers based in Hawaii, was in a desperate struggle to claw back readiness after failing a maintenance inspection in September and contending with dwindling numbers of flight-worthy aircraft for pilots and aircrew to rack up badly needed flight hours.
A weapons and tactics instructor assigned to the squadron tried to negotiate with the Secret Service, asking for permission to conduct functional check flights, brief flights needed to conduct routine maintenance. The request, he said, was denied.
Ten days after the Obamas departed Hawaii on Jan. 4 and the temporary flight restriction, known in military parlance as TRF, was lifted, two Super Stallions from HMH-463 collided during a routine night flight off the coast of Oahu, creating a fireball in the sky and killing all 12 Marines aboard the aircraft on impact. The tragic crash represented the greatest loss of Marines in an aviation mishap since Jan. 26, 2005, when a Super Stallion carrying 31 troops crashed during a sandstorm in Iraq, resulting in the deaths of all 31 aboard.…
read … Vacation
Overwhelming Majority of Hep A cases Ate Scallops at Genki Sushi
SA: …“Unfortunately, we cannot provide exact numbers because the investigation is ongoing. However, we can confirm that the overwhelming majority ate at Genki, and the overwhelming majority of those who ate at Genki Sushi had consumed scallops at Genki. Only a small percentage have been secondary cases, and all secondary cases have been close contacts or family,” said Jonathan Hilts, a public health educator and information specialist in the Disease Outbreak Control Division.
The Health Department investigates all cases of hepatitis A reported by health care providers. It follows up with patients to try to determine the source of the infection, limit the spread of the contagious liver disease and protect the public health….
SA: Hepatitis A a ‘factor’ in woman’s death
read … Specific data on hepatitis A not forthcoming from state
After Four Years State-Owned Ag Project Finally Produces Some Watermelons
SA: State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz estimates he’s given the tour 70 times over the last four years. He has shown political leaders, business people, visiting scholars and just about anyone who will listen the future he sees in the fallow and overgrown farmland. It’s not the same tour over and over, though. There’s new information because the project is taking shape. “It’s starting to pick up because it’s becoming more real,” Dela Cruz says….
A question that Dela Cruz often gets and doesn’t much like is, So when will this project be finished?
“This is an incremental build,” he says. “It’s like asking when will tourism end. It’s an evolving process.”
This summer, the first harvest of watermelon and bell pepper came from the Wahiawa Project lands.
read … After Four Years
Hawaii Anti-GMO Activist Leaving State
KE: …they won't actually go farm. Not when it's so much easier to bitch about people who actually are doing ag, and make up graphics that push an unattainable pie in the sky vision so they have an excuse to keep begging for donations and support.
Most recently, we've got Nomi "Babes" Carmona begging for letters of recommendation so she can get a job “investigating supply chains in the food and agricultural industries." Though she deems it a “perfect fit," the rest of us are asking, WTF does she know about that?
Of course, like the other "leaders" of the antis, Nomi functions on narcissism and delusions of grandeur. What else would prompt her to claim that local government workers and law enforcement officers want her to stay in Hawaii? Hahahaha! Or to suggest that she's been doing "good work" here? Or to actually believe that she has a "skill set" that is useful to or needed in Hawaii?
But at least we're getting a closer to the truth:
“…I have spent every dime I have on this movement and I went all in and I have to, must, take a good job and expand my opportunities to gain….”
In other words, Nomi is no longer able to make money off the anti-GMO movement in Hawaii, so she's moving on, after wreaking havoc and leaving a mess for others to clean. Nothing new in that scenario.
Meanwhile, Walter Ritte also has hand out, asking folks to fund a one-hour documentary on his life….
read … Musings: Hero to Zero
Hawaii's Crazy War Over Zombie Cats
OO: There is an evolutionary death match under way in Hawaii, where half a million feral cats, some of them infected with a terrifying zombie parasite, are wreaking havoc on endangered species. Some people call them the "kitties of doom." Others will do anything to save them….
read … Crazy
Top Animal Liberation Nut Tied to Hawaii, Samoa, Palau
SA: …Inga Gibson’s dedication to animal welfare issues took shape while growing up in Hawaii and spending time elsewhere in the mid-Pacific.
Gibson, 45, whose father had a law practice in the islands and served as deputy attorney general in American Samoa and later as a justice on the Supreme Court of Palau, said her family witnessed troubles tied to matters such as roaming dog populations and weak animal protection laws.
“We were always rescuing animals,” said Gibson, now a Hawaii policy consultant with the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States. The advocacy nonprofit focuses on policy-making efforts and assists various local organizations, such as the Hawaiian Humane Society, with training, grants and other support….
read … Top Nut
Punatic Stops Using Deodorant, Gets Writeup in ‘Elite Daily’
ED: …while sweating “like a pig,” her body somehow doesn’t emit an odor, she says….
read … Meet the Elite
Program for mentally ill inmates
HTH: For a few individuals, the Going Home organization’s pilot program helped break that cycle at a cost of about $130 a day to house an inmate.
Three County Council members offered $5,000 apiece from their discretionary funds to help Going Home create the pilot project.
With that $15,000, Going Home housed six people in the community after incarceration, with immediate “wrap-around” services that included counseling and case management to give them three months of stability immediately upon exiting the prison system.
read … Effective
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