Hawaii Value of $100? -- $84.18
Caldwell, Ige: Least Transparent in Hawaii History
HNN: …Last week Fire Chief Manuel Neves called police to complain that an official fire department document was leaked to the media. Under state law – all records are open except for certain narrow exceptions – like medical and personnel records.
But it is a misdemeanor to knowingly disclose a non-public record. This could be the first criminal prosecution into a leak in Hawaii.
The fire department union called the chief's criminal complaint an intimidation tactic to scare firefighters from griping publicly about his leadership.
For those of us in the Hawaii media, this is just the latest of many efforts to prevent access to information about how our government is operating. The administrations of Mayor Caldwell and Governor Ige are the least transparent we have ever seen. …
read … Least Transparent
HD48 and SD24 to be Open Seats in 2018 Election
SA: State Rep. Jarrett Keohokalole announced Thursday he will seek election to the Windward Oahu state Senate seat that will be vacated by Sen. Jill Tokuda. Tokuda announced Wednesday she is running for lieutenant governor.
The District 24 Senate seat includes Kailua and Kaneohe, ….
Keohokalole, 33, was first elected to the state House in 2014 and was unopposed in the 2016 election. He is a Democrat….
read … HD48 OPEN, SD24 OPEN
HART Burns Millions on ‘Art’, Embossed Columns
CB: The total cost of the art within the actual stations is expected to be $5 million. But Brennan said the cost of the aesthetic column program was negotiated between two private companies and he did not provide a cost estimate for it, except to say the embossed columns generally cost 10 percent more to produce than the rest of the columns….
So far, 11 contracts for the Art-in-Transit program have been granted for amounts ranging from $109,000 to $256,000….
read … Money to Burn
Hawaii Burns Down Rainforest for ‘Renewable’ Biofuels
IM: …The California Renewables Portfolio Standard Program law is more than 17,000 words long.
In California, “qualifying energy sources are biomass, solar thermal, photovoltaic, wind, geothermal, fuel cells using renewable fuels, small hydroelectric generation of 30 megawatts or less, digester gas, municipal solid waste conversion, landfill gas, ocean wave, ocean thermal, or tidal current, and any additions or enhancements to the facility using that technology.” (Notice biofuel is not included?)
Municipal solid waste conversion can only be counted towards the California RPS if it relies on noncombustion thermal processes. The Hawai`i H-Power facility, which uses combustion to process municipal waste, would not qualified for California`s RPS.
A decade ago, Hawai`i wanted to lure the ethanol industry into Hawai`i, no matter what the environmental costs were. State law was amended with overly broad language that still exists today. Biofuels always count towards the Hawai`i RPS, even if it means burning down the Amazon rainforest to grow bioenergy crops, or using chemicals to convert coal into bioliquids….
read … Biofooled
Chinatown: Caldwell’s Dim Bulb-outs Become Homeless Camps
HNN: …many Chinatown merchants complain the bulbouts, with their larger rounded corners, take away pull-over places for customers and loading vehicles,and that's hurt business.
"They're impeding commerce and they're dangerous. Very simple. Get 'em out!" said Oren Schliemen.
His complaint goes beyond commerce. Schlieman's Info Grafik business overlooks one of the intersections. He recently took photographs of a firetruck having trouble turning on the narrowed corner.
"It went completely into the opposite lane. If there had been a car there it obviously wouldn't have been able to make a turn," he said.
Chu Lan Shubert-Kwock, of the Chinatown Business and Community Association, gathered 2,500 signatures on a petition against the bulbouts. She said they've become problem spots.
"People sleep there, they park there, they drink there," she said. "Mostly our homeless use that places for storing their cart, clothing, whatever they have because noboby can chase them."
Councilwoman Carol Fukunaga introduced a resolution calling for the immediate removal of the bulbouts…..
read … Dim Bulb
Kona: Homeless Keep their Needles, Leave Truckloads of Trash Behind
WHT: …Hawaii County Department of Parks and Recreation maintenance crews had their hands — and their trucks — full Wednesday, as they cleared out rubbish from the Old Airport Park in preparation for a cleanup effort set for Aug. 9-10.
Dennis Riordan, superintendent of parks maintenance, said crews carted away 15 truckloads and two roll-offs (dumpsters) full of trash following the mass exit of homeless campers from Old A. He added workers didn’t encounter any recognizable biohazards, such as drug needles…..
DM: Could marijuana really cause a mental breakdown?
read … They Kept all their Needles
Former HPD officer convicted of child sex assault crimes now facing civil suit
HNN: Former Honolulu police officer Jessie Laconsay, who is already serving a 10 year sentence for sexually assaulting a teen, faces even more punishment.
The mother of the victim is taking him to civil court for monetary damages, but Laconsay's attorney says the lawsuit may backfire.
Laconsay pleaded no contest to multiple charges, admitting that he had been assaulting the girl for several years, beginning when she was about 12 years old. The 10-year veteran of the force would babysit the child while her mother, who is also a police officer, would have to work.
In June of last year, the mother caught him in the act after returning from work early. The then 37-year old Laconsay took off in his subsidized vehicle. That triggered an island wide manhunt that ended the next day, when Laconsay was found near Dillingham Airfield….
SA: Bisexual Child Molester Victimized Seven Kids on Kauai
read … Child Molester
Pie Meet Sky: 80K Tech Jobs for Hawaii
ST: …Hawaii has an ambitious goal ahead. By 2045, the state is looking to be the first in the nation to rely on all renewable energy. But to get there will take an enormous IT push in terms of talent and capability, a push that the state has already begun, says Hawaii CIO Todd Nacapuy.
In order to create the tech infrastructure necessary to make the state’s energy systems completely renewable in the next 30 years, Nacapuy and Hawaii Gov. David Ige have laid out several short- and midterm goals. These include: creating 80,000 new tech and innovation jobs paying at least $80,000 a year by 2030; modernizing government IT systems using mostly commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions; and partnering with Adobe and others to create a paperless government.
“All of this stuff aligns together nicely,” Nacapuy says. “We need to create the technology, we need to have the workers in place by 2030 so the technology can be created, and moving to a more commercially viable software helps us bring in and attract that talent.”….
read … Governor Pollyanna
We’re mad as hell, and wearing it like a medal
Cataluna: …professional anger, anger that is cultivated and honed, anger that is valued as an asset and a skill.
People who can be eloquently angry, stylishly irate or perpetually perturbed can make a career out of it. Not just a career of threatening to anger-blast well-heeled corporations unless they give you a big check to be a “consultant” or “community liaison”; it seems like the new game is anger that never abates, anger that just moves from one issue to the next with equal engagement and intensity, anger that is lucrative not as a threat, but as a terribly effective, terribly destructive tool….
Perhaps anger has become equated with intelligence, a concept given root on college campuses where challenging authority is encouraged while accepting conventionality is seen as weak, lazy and uncool. Write a paper taking down a cherished touchstone of the community and get an A….
But when everybody is screaming mad, what actual positive changes are made?
This quote is included in Mary Kawena Pukui’s “Olelo Noeau” collection of Hawaiian proverbs:
Nau ke ku‘i, lohi ka lima — The direct translation is given as, “When one grinds the teeth, the hand slows,” meaning that anger makes the work take longer and gets in the way of progress.
At this point in time, the emotional calibration is so warped that things that aren’t angry are criticized for being vapid, and things that are infused with anger are admired. The emotional center is missing. Things that should just roll off our shoulders set us off while we shrug at things that should make us mad….
read … We’re mad as hell, and wearing it like a medal
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