Republican Tax Cut Plan Would Give $3174 to Average Hawaii Household
Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted November 13, 2017
What These 3 Doctors Think Should Be Done for Children Who Think They Are Transgender
Ninth Circuit Partly Lifts Trump Travel Ban Blockade
Telescope Protesters: Gon Must go because he is Asian
CB: …three Hawaiian protectors — Kaleikoa Kaʻeo, Kahoʻokahi Kanuha and Andre Perez — were arrested for speaking the truth, that Gon, as a non-Hawaiian, doesn’t have the kuleana to represent the interests of Hawaiian people.
It’s crucial that Hawaiian voices are foregrounded in the TMT struggle, which is why this op-ed isn’t about the TMT or Mauna Kea as much as it’s about the responsibilities we as non-Hawaiians have to Hawaiians.
I write as an Asian settler myself, (IQ Test: Does this impress you?) calling on all settlers in Hawaii to recognize that Gon isn’t just a “Hawaiian issue” — he is our problem too, and arguably the problem of everyone in Hawaii who desires a sustainable future.
Perhaps even more significantly, however, Gon is just the latest iteration of a systemic issue of Asian-settler colonialism. We can call for his resignation and stand in solidarity with HULI while also staying focused on the larger system that enables individuals like Gon to occupy positions of power and make decisions at the expense of Hawaiians….
why have a non-Hawaiian person serve as “cultural expert”….
As Kaʻeo said on the morning of his arrest, “to be Hawaiian is a criminal act.”…. (Translation: We protesters believe only criminals are really Hawaiian.)
read … Anti-Asian
Homeless: Hawaii Avoids Massive West Coast Increase by Focusing on Housing First
SA: …The number of homeless across Hawaii fell 9 percent in the annual, national homeless survey conducted in January — the first statewide decrease in eight years. Oahu represented the only island that saw an increase — of 19 people.
At the same time, Alexander said, Los Angeles saw a 24 percent jump in its homeless population, while Portland, Ore., and Seattle had nearly double-digit increases.
“We’re staying focused on the solution, which is housing,” Alexander said. “A lot of cities are being distracted by things that don’t work, like safe zones, where we are laser focused on housing, whether Housing First or making units available.”
At the same time, hospitals are funding specialty shelters aimed at specific homeless populations, such as homeless veterans and those well enough to be discharged from expensive hospital beds but not healthy enough to heal on the street.
The city:
>> is buying apartment buildings to house Oahu’s homeless;
>> has opened Hale Mauliola, a homeless shelter on Sand Island made from converted shipping containers;
>> is refurbishing a four-story building in Iwilei to create a homeless hygiene center.
Businessman Duane Kurisu plans to open his Kahauiki Village near Sand Island to house homeless working families. Businesswoman Vicky Cayetano, Hawaii’s former first lady, who founded a commercial cleaning business, has pledged to hire Kahauiki Village residents who want to work….
“There are so many entry points into homelessness: poverty, new parents, under-employment, domestic violence, seriously mentally ill, addiction issues,” Menino said. “We’ve got to figure out how to stop that, to stop the bleeding.”…
Distraction: A Hand Up - A Visit With Twinkle Borge
read … Housing First
DHHL Lost Nearly 1,000 Applications
SA: …The plaintiffs in a long-running class-action lawsuit over long waits for Department of Hawaiian Home Lands homestead lots have scored what they consider another crucial victory in court.
Barring a last-minute production of documents, the state no longer can challenge whether potentially hundreds of plaintiffs whose DHHL files are missing or incomplete are entitled to damages — thanks to an Oct. 30 ruling by Circuit Judge Virginia Crandall, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
Now the only question remaining, the lawyers said, is how much they are owed….
“This was a home run for us,” said attorney Tom Grande, who along with Carl Varady represents roughly 2,700 plaintiffs in their 1999 class action against the state and DHHL.
Varady said as many as 1,000 plaintiffs could be affected.
A spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office disputed the plaintiffs’ characterization of Crandall’s ruling but declined further comment, saying the office was preparing a motion for clarification….
read … Plaintiffs claim win in Hawaiian Home Lands suit
Ige, Hirono Love Trump’s Border Protection Nominee
CB: Kevin Kealoha McAleenan is already acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and enjoys bipartisan support….
At his confirmation hearing last month, Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat from Hawaii who has frequently denounced Trump’s immigration policies, acted as McAleenan’s sponsor, sitting alongside him while senators on the Senate Finance Committee asked him questions….
McAleenan also received a strong vote of confidence from Hawaii Gov. David Ige, whose attorney general, Doug Chin, has been among the most active in the country at litigating in opposition to Trump’s restrictive immigration policies for visitors from a group of majority-Muslim countries.
In a letter to the Senate, Ige voiced “wholehearted support” for McAleenan’s confirmation, crediting him with a “keen desire to serve the public with the spirit of aloha.”
Hirono and Ige worked closely with McAleenan over several years because he served as the point person at the CBP in establishing a pre-clearance facility in Tokyo to ease the arrival of Japanese tourists in Hawaii. In December, the agency reopened a federal inspection facility in Kona that had been closed in 2010, permitting Japan Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines to increase service from Japan to the Big Island….
McAleenan also helped Hirono in her efforts to expand the Global Entry program to citizens of Singapore, India, Japan and Taiwan. The program permits citizens of those countries to obtain the expedited customs clearance previously granted to countries such as Canada, Mexico, Panama, Germany, the United Kingdom and South Korea. Background checks and interviews allow them to become what the federal government calls “trusted travelers.”
read … Man With Hawaii Roots On Verge Of Top Border Enforcement Post
Billionaire Could Pull the Plug on Civil Beat at any Moment
CB: …A couple of years ago, I participated in a “Journalism in the Digital Age” panel and the discussion turned to the future of the news media business. These panelists included young, progressive and thoughtful representatives from two now-defunct websites, HuffPost Hawaii and The Offsetter, as well as staff from Civil Beat.
When we began discussing potential funding models, one member of the audience suggested something to the effect of “more benevolent billionaires,” like Pierre Omidyar, the key funding source of Civil Beat. And it’s true, money raining from the sky to make more and better journalism in this world would be wonderful.
Realistically, though, only so many billionaires exist (fewer than 600 in the United States), and very few of them even support journalism. Those who do also can turn their backs on such goodwill ventures at any moment, as happened earlier this month in New York when billionaire Joe Ricketts decided to shut down DNAinfo and Gothamist when its few dozen employees had the audacity to unionize to collectively bargain for better working conditions…..
Tech giants really are experimenting with all of us….
Related: Civil Beat: Banks and Developers ‘help to fund a lot of stories’
read … How Should We Pay For ‘Real’ Journalism?
Enviros Try to Convince you that Recycling into electricity is not really Recycling
CB: …as the market value for plastic and other recyclables fluctuates, the cost to collect, sort and ship the discards off the island keeps rising. A recent city audit made it clear: the blue bin program is a financial burden.
In 2009 it cost the city $45 to process one ton of mixed recyclables, including paper, aluminum, plastic and glass though the curbside blue bin program. Last year it cost $142 per ton…..
Ending the curbside program and instead incinerating recyclables at H-POWER, Honolulu’s waste-to-energy plant where trash is burned to produce electricity, would save the city millions of dollars, the audit said. Non-recyclable trash in grey bins already goes to H-POWER, and the electricity produced is sold to Hawaiian Electric.
Inspired by the audit, Councilwoman Kymberly Pine introduced a resolution calling on the city to reform its recycling program. The council’s sustainability committee will discuss the topic in December.
While the audit suggests the city incinerate all blue bin recyclables, glass and aluminum don’t burn well at H-POWER, according to Michael O’Keefe, the city’s assistant refuse chief. So most likely any change would involve only plastics and fiber products like cardboard, newspaper and other paper products….
CB: Don’t Give Up On Honolulu’s Recycling Effort
Related: Crichton: Environmentalism is a religion
read … Recycle Or Incinerate? The Battle Of The Blue Bins
A&B Water: Enviros Try to Trick Public With Picture of Overflowing Ditch
HNN: Some Maui residents (The usual suspects) say a big corporation is wasting water that it's diverting from streams and that the state needs to take action.
In a video taken last Oct., water is seen overflowing into a field from the New Hamakua Ditch in Huelo.
Lucienne De Naie, president of Maui Tomorrow Foundation and an east Maui resident, says it's evidence that shows Alexander & Baldwin is wasting the precious resource….
(She’s hoping that you don’t know anything about water ditches.)
When it closed the HC&S plantation last year, A&B said the amount of water it diverted dropped from 165 million gallons to 20 million gallons per day and that 95% of taro streams have already been restored.
"There is only about six million gallons used by the County for domestic use, so where is all the rest of this water going?" said Marti Townsend, Sierra Club of Hawaii director.
According to A&B, water not used remains in the East Maui streams and watershed. ….
read … Maui residents say A&B is wasting water its diverting from streams
Hawaii Tax Credits at Work: Tesla a ‘hotbed for racist behavior’
AP: …Tesla Inc.’s production floor is a “hotbed for racist behavior,” more than 100 African-American employees claimed in a lawsuit in which they alleged black workers at the electric carmaker suffer severe and pervasive harassment….
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Marcus Vaughn, who worked in the Fremont factory from April 23 to Oct. 31. Vaughn alleged that employees and supervisors regularly used the “N word” around him and other black colleagues. Vaughn said he complained in writing to human resources and Musk and was terminated in late October for “not having a positive attitude.”….
The case is Vaughn v. Tesla Inc., Superior Court of the State of California (County of Alameda).
CNN: Tesla board member leaves his firm amid misconduct allegations
(Really Obvious Question: Why are Hawaii tax dollars subsidizing this racist company?)
read … Black workers claim Tesla a ‘hotbed for racist behavior’ in suit
It’s the Last Stop on the Light-Rail Gravy Train
WSJ: …Mayors want new lines that won’t be ready for a decade. Commuters will be in driverless cars by then….
read … The Wall Street Journal
HPD ‘1 or 2 dozen hits’ from backlog of sexual assault kits
SA: …The Honolulu Police Department says that by the end of November it will clear a backlog of nearly 1,400 sexual assault evidence kits, some dating back more than two decades, and will send out all of about 200 more recent kits in the department’s possession for testing by the end of the year….
Some of the early kit results have yielded matches in the FBI’s offender database.
Investigators have matched “between one and two dozen” DNA profiles obtained from the more than 800 kits submitted for testing so far this year with potential perpetrators in the CODIS database, according to HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu….
“Investigators are currently reviewing the cases with matches to determine which matches have evidentiary value,” Yu said in an email….
Robinson, the HPD assistant chief, cautioned against drawing conclusions about CODIS hits at this stage.
“It could be identifying a suspect we already know, like a date-rape situation, where we already know who the suspect is,” he said, but acknowledged that matches could link a suspect to other crimes….
read … HPD clearing backlog of sexual assault kits
UH Cancer Center projects an end to budget deficit
SA: The University of Hawaii Cancer Center is projecting a balanced budget this year for the first time since opening its $130 million Kakaako facility in 2013.
The center has been running a $7 million annual deficit, which dropped to $2 million in fiscal 2017 after cutting expenditures through attrition and operational efficiencies, gaining $2 million from UH-Manoa for faculty salaries and another $2 million from Gov. David Ige’s budget, said Dr. Randall Holcombe, director of the cancer center, which released its annual financial report Nov. 1….
read … UH Cancer Center projects an end to budget deficit
Incompetent HGEA Members Let Murdering Lunatic Escape Hospital
SA: A 59-year-old man who was acquitted by reason of insanity for the gruesome 1979 killing of a woman at Ala Moana Center is missing from the Hawaii State Hospital in Kaneohe.
A massive manhunt is underway for the man, identified as Randall Saito.
He apparently failed to return to the facility Sunday, though it's not entirely clear whether he had privileges to leave in the first place.
The state sent out an alert on Saito about 8:20 p.m. Sunday, and said he was supposed to be back at the State Hospital at 11 a.m.
Sources confirm to Hawaii News Now that Saito is the same man who was acquitted by reason of insanity in the 1979 killing of 29-year-old Sandra Yamashiro at Ala Moana Center.
The victim was selected at random, authorities said at the time, shot in the face with a pellet gun and then fatally stabbed.
After the murder, Saito was reportedly diagnosed with sexual sadism and necrophilia, or sexual attraction to corpses.
He was committed to the Hawaii State Hospital after a judge acquitted him.
At the time, the city prosecutor vehemently disagreed with the decision, calling his acquittal a "miscarriage of justice."
"The defendant committed a cold-blooded murder," the prosecutor said.
Saito has sought release from the Hawaii State Hospital since the early 1990s, but those requests have always been denied.
In 1981, his attorney did not contest Saito's committal, saying he was dangerous and "intends to do it again."
Nearly two decades later, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported that state prosecutors believed Saito to fit "all the criteria of a serial killer" and opposed his release.
And in 2002, in a Honolulu Advertiser article, prosecutors questioned why the "psychopathic predator" was granted unescorted leave from the facility.….
read … Killer on the Loose
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