Summit: US Security Guarantees for North Korean Denuclearization--Peace Treaty Next
Public-Private Partnerships in Hawaii
Best States for Working Dads--Hawaii 25th
Local 5 Wants Ige to Veto TAT Hike
AP: …Eric Gill, secretary-treasurer for Unite Here Local 5, which represents about 12,000 union members, said the union does not support the final version of the bill because it believes it could have unintended consequences.
"Nickel-and-diming undermines guest satisfaction," Gill said. "It affects tipping, and it could impact banquet bookings and other business."
Gov. David Ige has until June 25 to veto the bill.
Bill opponents are circulating a petition, which already has 1,750 signatures, to present to Ige, Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association President and CEO Mufi Hannemann said….
read … Veto
Carpenters Council, PRP Launch New Front Group –‘Be Change Now’
SA: …The Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters — which previously backed the political action committee that mounted a multimillion-dollar campaign against former Gov. Ben Cayetano’s bid for Honolulu mayor against the rail project — is funding a new super PAC in hopes of influencing voters in the 2018 primary election.
Over the weekend, new super PAC Be Change Now began running television advertisements in support of state Sen. Josh Green. who is among a throng of big-name hopefuls seeking the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor.
The carpenters council is the only group connected to Be Change Now, and Green is the only candidate the super PAC is supporting at this time, Be Change Now said Monday in an email response to questions.
“There may be other candidates the organization decides to support although that hasn’t been determined at this point,” the group said in its email….
The carpenters council endorsed Green last month.
The council also endorsed U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa in her challenge to incumbent Gov. David Ige in February, but it has not thrown its support behind anyone seeking to replace Hanabusa in Congress, the third closely watched statewide election this fall.
While the Regional Council of Carpenters is the sole financial backer of Be Change Now, it may accept contributions from other donors, including PRP, before the 2018 election season is over, the email said.
There is already a tie between Be Change Now and PRP. Josh Magno, listed as the chairman and treasurer of Be Change Now, is an employee of PRP, which is funded jointly by the Regional Council of Carpenters and more than 240 Hawaii contractor companies.
The PRP PAC, which still exists but has been inactive since 2014, spent $3.6 million on advertising trying to persuade voters to reject Cayetano’s mayoral campaign. Cayetano subsequently filed a defamation lawsuit against the PAC, which was settled when PRP agreed to issue a public apology and donate $125,000 to two charities….
read … Carpenters council supports super PAC
Election already won for 4 candidates
WHT: …Two Hawaii County Council members and two Big Island statehouse incumbents cruised to early victory this week when no candidates filed to oppose them.
As of the Tuesday filing deadline to appear on the Aug. 11 primary election ballot, Hilo District 3 Councilwoman Sue Lee Loy and North Kona District 8 Councilwoman Karen Eoff are unopposed in their bids for the nonpartisan office, according to a report from the state Office of Elections.
In the state Legislature, District 4 Rep. Joy San Buenaventura, Puna, and District 6 Rep. Nicole Lowen, Kona, both Democrats, face no competition from any party….
San Buenaventura was especially appreciative of the absence of challengers. She’s been busy helping her district respond to and recover from the lava crisis, and now doesn’t have to take time from that daunting task to campaign.
Thursday, for example, San Buenaventura was in Honolulu, meeting with the Hawaii Department of Transportation and helicopter pilots about noise over Puna and seeking their videos (from the helicopters they were complaining about) to help homeowners (who can no longer hear the helicopters) check on the status of their properties. Friday, she met with Gov. David Ige to discuss possible problems he might have with the ohana (Homeless Tent Cities) zones bill, which is needed to help build transitional housing (tent cities) for lava victims (and reward Hanabusa cronies)….
read … Pathetic
Hawaii Politics Has Never Been For Sissies
CB: …Some politicians today seem particularly thin-skinned, ready to seek a restraining order from a judge or threaten to sue when people criticize them.
Don’t they know nastiness comes with the territory? The political world is no place for sissies. Former President Harry S Truman said it in 1949: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
That is still true today. If you are easily burned, maybe you should dodge the hot oven of political mudslinging.
Former Gov. Ben Cayetano puts it more directly: “Politics is a blood sport. People have to be able to take it.”….
To date, two key candidates recently slammed by their critics have appeared stunned; one said she was scared. GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Andria Tupola successfully persuaded a District Court judge to issue an injunction against conservative splinter group blogger Eric Ryan. In her petition, Tupola said she “felt afraid and helpless” in the face of Ryan’s alleged yearlong email and cellphone harassment and cyber bullying.
In 2012, then-state Rep. Kymberly Pine got a temporary restraining order against Ryan after she alleged similar cyber attacks. Ryan was ousted from the Hawaii Republican Party the day before Tupola’s court date.
“I am not thin-skinned,” Tupola said….
Former gubernatorial candidate Clayton Hee also said Hawaii politics had reached a new low. That was after Honolulu attorney Megan Kau’s super PAC Women Against Domestic Violence Hawaii posted more than 100 signs along Kalanianaole Highway reading, “Stop Domestic Violence: Stop Hee.”
Kau says her signs linking Hee to domestic violence are from his ex-wife Lyla Berg’s allegations of physical and verbal abuse in court documents in Berg’s divorce petition in 1989….
Said Hee: “It is not that I can’t take it…..”
read … Sissies
A Republican Governor Would Bring New Uncertainty To Rail Project
CB: …Rep. Andria Tupola, has repeatedly stated over the years that she’s not against Honolulu rail.
Well, not entirely against it, at least.
“I’m against rail that is ineffective, or rail that’s going to be insolvent,” Tupola told her colleagues on the House floor in 2015.
Moments later, she joined the minority in voting against a five-year extension of rail’s general excise tax surcharge on Oahu to keep the over-budget project afloat….
read … Andria Tupola: Support Rail, But Don’t Gouge Taxpayers
410 people in emergency shelters “are never going back to their homes.”
HTH: …Mayor Harry Kim said the number of houses destroyed by lava from Kilauea volcano is at least 600 and could be as high as 700, according to Janet Snyder, a spokeswoman for Kim.
Kim, according to Snyder, told emergency personnel at Civil Defense headquarters Monday the approximately 410 people in emergency shelters “are never going back to their homes.”…
“They have no place to go back home,” Snyder quoted Kim as saying. “We made a decision last week to work with federal, state, county and private entities to develop a whole new community to give people some hope for tomorrow.
“We represent that hope.”
Kim is scheduled to meet with the media this afternoon. The conference will also include Bob Fenton, Region 9 administrator for Federal Emergency Management Agency. Fenton, who oversees California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands, has Hawaii ties.
Snyder said Fenton has spoken with White House officials about the situation facing lower Puna.
“We’re here to support you, now and in the long-term,” Snyder quoted Fenton has saying.
“He did admit that FEMA’s programs are not made for this kind of situation,” Snyder said. She said Fenton added other federal agencies would have to be brought in to help those displaced by lava….
read … Mayor: Homes lost to lava could be as many as 700
Church begins construction on second shelter village for lava evacuees
HNN: Work has begun to turn a one-acre plot in Hawaiian Paradise Park into the island's second village for eruption evacuees.
So far, the Connect Point Church has raised enough money to build 10 tiny homes. They are 10-foot by 12-foot units — exactly like the ones that volunteers put up over the weekend on land leased by Hope Services Hawaii off Pahoa Village Road.
The land off Kaloli Drive, where the second set of homes is being built, belongs to the church.
Pastor Dion Maeda says that right now, he's asking the community for donations to go towards more units and utility installation costs.
"There's no water so we'll have to put in a water catchment system," Maeda said. "There's no power there so we're either looking at a generator or getting temporary power from the county."
The group's goal is to have the project complete in the next month….
read … Church begins construction on second shelter village for lava evacuees
Opioids: “For Once it’s Good to be 50th”
HB: The opioid crisis in Hawaii is much milder than in other U.S. states, though it has surged here in recent years. Here’s what is being done locally to reduce the problem.
Every day in the U.S., an average of 115 people die from opioids, a class of drugs that includes prescription pain pills such as OxyContin plus heroin and fentanyl. The White House says the opioid epidemic costs the nation more than $500 billion a year, and it has been declared the worst public health crisis in our country’s history.
Hawaii’s numbers remain small compared to the rest of the country. In 2016, the state had 5.2 opioid-related deaths per 100,000 people. The rate was 43.4 in West Virginia and 32.9 in Ohio, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse….
read … Opioids
More Thugs Join Former Unity House Scammers to Harass Waikiki Beach Boys
HNN: …It’s been two weeks since Dive Oahu has taken over the Kuhio Beach concessions and tensions continue to rise.
Verbal confrontations between beach boys and Dive Oahu employees, captured on Youtube and Instagram, are becoming more frequent.
Saturday night, someone cut the rope to Dive Oahu's canoe, causing it to drift down Waikiki beach. The canoe was not severely damaged and no one was arrested.
Dive Oahu declined to be interviewed for this story, but some employees said they feel threatened by the confrontations. They say the protests are driving away customers and making it difficult to hire workers.
Meanwhile, longtime watermen (petty thugs) like Eddie Rothman who leads the group "Da Hui,” have joined the protest….
"The city got to realize that the experiment is over," said (former Unity House scammer) Aaron Rutledge, owner of Star-Beachboys. "They gotta put a plug on this." ….
read … Tensions high as beach boys challenge decision to give concessions to Dive Oahu
Two Homeless Dudes Attack Woman on Bicycle
SA: …A male suspect was charged with robbery in a May 23 case in which a 54-year-old woman riding her bike in the Iwilei area at 2 a.m. felt someone grab her backpack.
The victim reported she fell off her bike onto the ground and a second suspect began to strike her with a dangerous instrument while the first suspect took her backpack….
The victim saw one suspect at a shelter and he was arrested Sunday without incident, police said….
read … Two Homeless Dudes Attack Woman on Bicycle
Feds: Alleged Pimp Bribes, Threatens Witnesses from FDC
SA: …Federal prosecutors are asking the court to sanction McCoy for what they say are his repeated violations of an order prohibiting him from sharing or disclosing information in the records about alleged victims. They say McCoy has been using the protected information to contact, intimidate and bribe witnesses from his cell at the FDC using a contraband cellphone and through associates, including one of his brothers.
McCoy had been charged with trafficking seven women for prostitution, identified in a February indictment only as adult females 1-7. A federal grand jury returned a new indictment Thursday charging McCoy with additional counts of trafficking a minor female for prostitution, using a minor female to produce child pornography, and obstruction.
Investigators say in court records that they suspected McCoy of using a contraband cellphone after they intercepted a telephone conversation in which a woman told McCoy’s wife that McCoy had contacted her on a non-FDC telephone.
They say their suspicion was confirmed in an intercepted telephone conversation between one of McCoy’s brothers and McCoy associate Jonathan Cadet, following Cadet’s arrest for threatening a witness. Cadet is charged with obstruction and witness tampering.
Investigators say a Homeland Security Investigations special agent was listening in on a conversation when another McCoy associate told the witnesses that McCoy was offering $50,000 for witnesses to recant their statements.
read … Be Glad the Feds are Handling this, the State would never be able to
UH contracts now include buyout protections That Everybody Else adopted Years Ago
SA: …When men’s volleyball coach Charlie Wade signed a two-year extension in the wake of a 19-8 season, his agreement symbolized the University of Hawaii’s attempts to have the best of both contractual worlds — coaches under long-term deals and an avenue to lessen financial exposure in case of a buyout.
Under terms of the May 31 agreement, should UH make a coaching change before the July 31, 2021 expiration of the contract, the school could be able to reduce the buyout based upon the salary of a subsequent position he might take.
While such provisions are in wide use elsewhere in college athletics, it is a new and overdue wrinkle in Manoa contracts….
read … UH contracts include new buyout protections
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