Fishing Groups Question Legality of Antiquities Act in Monument Designation
U Texas signs agreement with Japan to collaborate on TMT
Waikiki HSTA, Local 5, Berning Socialists Protest: Trump is a Faaaassscccist
We had to listen to 8 years of ‘Bush is a Fascist’. Can’t these guys get some new material?
CB: Anti-Trump Protest In Waikiki: Peace, Aloha And ‘Rebellion’
CB: Trump nearly identical to the young Hitler of the 1920s (Question: If Trump is a fascist, why aren’t you in a concentration camp?)
SA: Trump starting to sound like Obama on immigration (So does this mean that Obama is also Hitler? Is Hitler suffering multiple personality disorder?)
SA: “On Nov. 8, America voted to send the same message to the old-guard Democratic Party establishment that Chelsea Lyons Kent sent at the Democratic National Convention on July 26….” (So does this mean that Chelsea Kent is also Hitler? Is Hitler a cross-dresser? When will this get boring?)
CB: “This is the first time in recent history that so much power and authority will be consolidated into a single party — that is what scares me.” (Doesn’t remember 2009-2010 when the Dems controlled everything.)
HNN: More than 1,100 Anti-Donald Trump protesters march through Waikiki
SA: “Crybabies” and “losers” “There are a lot of desperate people out there who can’t pay their bills and who want good schools for their children,” said HSTA President Corey Rosenlee. “Right now, unfortunately, the answer is Donald Trump.”
KHON: Hundreds of anti-Trump protestors march through Waikiki
Big Q: Do you think America is ready for a female president?
Change.org -- 4.3M Sign Petition to Make Hillary President Anyway
Middle Class Will Save Big Money When Obamacare is Dumped
CB: …My Family would benefit by a possible rollback of $450 per month increase and unfortunately charity begins at home. Perhaps a program whereby individuals can opt to "sponsor" a individual (i.e. immigrant, healthcare coverage, tuition, etc.) may be an initiative to embrace….
read … Just Skip to the Comments
Oxy Heads Complain of Trouble Doctor Shopping and Pharmacy Shopping
HTH: …Area physicians say their patients often get turned away at the counter because pharmacists don’t have enough pills on hand to fill even a single prescription.
Doctors and patients point fingers at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, alleging the DEA puts limits on how many opioid pain pills a pharmacy can order each month.
But the DEA calls doctors and pharmacists liars. While, at the same time, a Hawaii legislator says part of the reason is drug addicts use up the supply of available pills before those who are truly in need can get to them. But he, too, says federal authorities limit supply….
“We know it happens, for a pharmacist, or even a doctor, or somebody who actually would write a prescription — to deflect responsibility,” said Field Division spokesman Tim Massino. “In order to limit their own liability, some individuals do deflect by erroneously informing the patient, or the individual seeking the medication, that the DEA is limiting supply … they may blatantly lie and indicate they are out of whatever the customer is seeking.” …
Some with prescriptions, who are drug-seekers, Green said, don’t need the medication and “are displacing those who really do.” But to add context, he said, about 4 percent of the world’s population lives in the United States — but the U.S. is responsible for using 80 percent of all narcotics.
In Europe, the typical pain medication used is Tylenol. In the U.S., the typical drug is hydrocodone, Oxycodone, Percocet or Vicodin, Green said….
read … Need
Clean Water Branch: Homeless Responsible for ‘Current of Human S***’ off Ala Moana Park
CB: Water quality changes from day to day. It’s known to deteriorate rapidly after heavy rains, for instance, that flush polluted runoff into the ocean. But new challenges are emerging, such as the proximity of homeless encampments to the beach.
Honolulu resident Cora Speck was surfing with a few other people on a Sunday morning in August near Ala Moana Park when they realized big dark globs in the water were not sea turtles.
“We became engulfed in a current of human shit,” she said. “I had a brown smear of poop on my face.”
Speck said no warning signs were posted prior to the incident but they reported it to lifeguards and health officials.
Speck, an injury prevention coordinator at The Queen’s Medical Center, said she subsequently got a hepatitis A shot and spent the next few days resting and recovering — physically and emotionally.
Health officials looked into her complaint, Yamada said.
It was initially thought that the sewage could have come from a spill in Manoa. Honolulu officials reported nearly 13,000 gallons had overflowed earlier that weekend and that the tainted water could have flowed down the Ala Wai Canal into the ocean and drifted to where they were surfing.
But Yamada said the sewage would have broken down traveling such a long path.
Instead, he said, health officials believe the fecal waste came from homeless people who live near the park. State Clean Water Branch officials confirmed seeing people dumping out their buckets of excrement.
read … Beware Of Big Brown Globs In The Waters Off Hawaii Beaches
Star-Adv: Make housing stronger focus of TOD projects
SA: The Honolulu City Council Zoning and Planning Committee has advanced Bill 74, the legislation introduced in 2015 to lay the ground rules for development within the quarter-mile to half-mile zone around the stations.
There needs to be a refinement in the bill before its final passage, spelling out more clearly the expectation for developers, especially regarding affordable housing….
One proposal would require that any project with 10 or more dwelling or lodging units would need to set aside 30 percent as affordable. Those units would be priced for households not exceeding 120 percent of area median income (AMI), with two-thirds for those at 80-100 percent of AMI. However, even that language was not included in the bill the committee moved….
Some projects already in the pipeline show both the potential and pitfalls of TOD. When complete, the Halekauwila rail stop will include a vibrant mix of affordable rentals, workforce housing and retail, as well as a “vertical school” in one of the projects.
But, another project near the Ala Moana Center terminus moved through the process without affordable housing provisions on-site. The city can’t afford to miss many residential opportunities in fulfilling its TOD mission.
(Idea: Instead of trying to outguess the market, let developers build enough units to change the supply/demand equation so affordable housing becomes the norm. What a concept.)
Meanwhile: DOE proposes $9,000 per Unit Tax along rail line
read … Make housing stronger focus of TOD projects
With Money Guaranteed, Zoo Will Have a Plan ‘in 3-5 Years’
KHON: “Our normal operating budget is $6.8 million, if this amendment, or now that this amendment has passed, the estimate we’ll be getting is roughly anywhere between $5 and $6 and a half million,” Dr. Fleming pointed out.
So he says it’s up to the mayor and city council to decide how to supplement the money it needs.
“It’s kind of up in the air, and too be honest, for the next maybe 3 to 5 years, we’re gonna have to really put our heads together and come up with some very creative ways to generate some more money so we can become less of a burden on the taxpayers and not require supplemental income above and beyond the amendment,” Dr. Fleming said.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell will soon be submitting a budget proposal to the City Council in March 2017. The Honolulu Zoo fund goes into effect on July 1, 2017.
read … Zoo
Council Wants Money For Fishers Hurt By Monument Expansion
CB: …the council decided to send a letter to Obama highlighting the expansion’s impacts on Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities and requesting that the Department of Commerce mitigate those impacts through “direct compensation to fishing sectors.”
The council’s letter will also include a request that the ban on commercial fishing in the expansion area — which includes the waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — be phased in. The letter will also ask for “other programs that would directly benefit those impacted from the monument expansion.”
Compensation for fisheries closures in federal waters is not unprecedented. In 2005, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reimbursed the Hawaii Longline Association $2.2 million for legal expenses tied to the group’s lawsuit opposing a temporary closure of the swordfish fishery. Also, as part of the same $5 million federal grant that funded the reimbursement, lobster and bottomfish fishers displaced by the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve established by President Bill Clinton also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct compensation and funds for fisheries research.
With regard to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, after it was first established by President George W. Bush in 2006, then-Sen. Daniel Inouye inserted an earmark in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 that provided more than $6 million to NMFS for a “capacity reduction program.” That program allowed vessel owners with permits to fish for lobster or bottomfish in the NWHI to be paid the economic value of their permits if they chose to stop fishing well ahead of the date all commercial fishing was to end in the monument, June 15, 2011….
read … WESPAC
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