A Rogues Gallery – Hawaii Candidates 2018
Best Cities for First Time Homebuyers? Honolulu Ranks 253rd
Poll: Voters Know Hanabusa Cannot be Trusted
SA: A plurality of Democratic voters think Gov. David Ige is the most trustworthy candidate running this year and also rate him highest for leadership ability in the new Honolulu Star-Advertiser Hawaii Poll.
Those findings suggest U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa may have a serious problem with her campaign messaging in the final weeks before the primary….
The Hawaii Poll found 45 percent of Democrats rated Ige as having the “best leadership ability” of the candidates for governor, while 42 percent rated Hanabusa as the best leader….
Among independents, a group that might also participate in the Democratic primary in significant numbers, 31 percent rated Ige as the most capable leader, while just 13 percent rated Hanabusa as the best leader.
Republican voters rated state Rep. Andria Tupola (R, Kalaeloa-Ko Olina-Maili) as the most capable leader who is running for governor this year, with 26 percent of those voters giving her top ratings….
Ige, meanwhile, has emphasized the trust issue during the campaign, saying he is “committed to restoring public trust in government.” A stock line from his presentations at candidate forums across the state has been that the voters can count on him to do “the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.”
According to the new poll, the voters most likely to participate in the Democratic primary agree that Ige is the most trustworthy of the candidates, with 44 percent of Democratic voters rating Ige as most trustworthy and 36 percent choosing Hanabusa as most trustworthy, according to the poll.
Of the voters who identified themselves as independents, 28 percent rated Ige as the most trustworthy candidate running for governor, with 14 percent selecting Hanabusa as most trustworthy, according to the poll. Republican voters ranked Tupola as most trustworthy…..
Related: www.TheRealHanabusa.com
read … Voters trust Ige’s leadership, poll finds
Hawaii GOP support for Trump surges
SA: ...Support for President Donald Trump has risen to 91 percent among Hawaii Republicans — up from 73 percent in March — according to the latest Honolulu Star-Advertiser Hawaii Poll….
Meanwhile, Democrats’ disapproval of the president has become more entrenched with 89 percent of those polled disapproving of his job performance, up from 84 percent in March….
Overall, 37 percent of those surveyed statewide approve of Trump’s job performance, versus 55 percent who disapprove, while 8 percent are not sure….
Shirlene Ostrov, chairwoman of the Hawaii Republican Party, attributes the uptick in support to the president’s conservative policies, whether it be on foreign policy, the economy or immigration, but thinks it’s also due to the behavior of Democrats. She said the onslaught of Democratic opposition to the president and his policies has likely served to shore up the president’s base.
“The resistance agenda of the opposition is wearisome,” said Ostrov. “People are getting tired of the resistance agenda — just resist anything that the administration does, whether it is the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, it’s resist. If it is trying to force peace with North Korea, resist. If it’s support strong immigration policies and borders, resist.”
Sam Slom, who for years was the lone Republican in the Hawaii Senate, agreed, saying that the “daily and constant attack on the president for whatever he does or whatever he says” had firmed up his support among the party. “It is one thing to be critical of ill-formed statements and midnight tweets; it is another thing to oppose everything,” he said….
read … Hawaii GOP support for Trump surges
Oxycontin Hawaii: 77 Deaths in 2016
HTH: …The death rate for opioid-related overdoses in the state is less than half the national average, with just 77 opioid-related overdose deaths statewide in 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Similarly, the state had the lowest prescribing rate for opioids in the country, with just 41.9 prescriptions for every 100 people in 2016, a third the rate of Alabama, the state with the highest prescribing rate at 121 prescriptions per 100 people.
On a local level, however, Hawaii County has by far the highest prescribing rate in the state at 66.4 prescriptions for every 100 people, double the prescribing rate of the City and County of Honolulu.
But the statistics obscure what some see as a serious public health issue in the community: Addiction. And Hawaii is by no means immune to the plague that has engulfed the rest of the country.
“I think addiction rates are incredibly high, shockingly high,” said Alysa Lavoie, case manager at the West Hawaii Community Health Center. “I don’t think any of the data that you’re going to find or see really reflects the true picture of not just what we’re seeing at the health center, but just in general.”
While maybe not measured as an epidemic in Hawaii, she said she believes there is one, just “behind closed doors, in a sense.”
“We see our typical houseless person walking down the street, and we assume addiction,” she said, “but I think that there’s so much more than that that we’re not seeing or that’s not coming to the clinic and not identified.”
Policymakers on the state level are also wary despite the numbers.
A state report published in December about Hawaii’s response to the misuse of opioids and other substances notes that Hawaii “often experiences a delayed impact in relationship to national trends in substance use.”
“It would be a mistake,” the report states, “to assume the difference in trend patterns between Hawaii and the contiguous U.S. means that there is no need to be vigilant.”
While non-fatal overdoses peaked in 2010, there have still been an average of close to 400 nonfatal incidents yearly, nearly half of which required hospitalization. Close to three quarters of opioid-related overdoses treated in hospitals involved only opioid pain relievers while a tenth involved just heroin.
read … Oxycontin Hawaii
Election Ploy: Hanabusa’s Police Allow Homeless to Run Rampant in Waikiki
SA: It was saddening, but not surprising, to learn that a belligerent homeless man assaulted a tourist in the heart of Waikiki recently. Since I returned to Honolulu in March, I have witnessed hostile homeless people on the sidewalks of Waikiki almost daily. I have been yelled at and nearly spat on, and worst of all, I have to see the mortified reaction of countless tourists enduring the same assault and intimidation all the time.
Now we have instances of violence, and no one should be surprised. If Waikiki wants to remain a top tourist destination, the neighborhood association and police better get their act together. They need to proactively rid the sidewalks of clearly hostile, aggressive individuals — they are not hard to find as they are often shouting at people wherever they happen to be — or expect more tragedies and a diminishing reputation of a very special place.
CLUE: SHOPO Endorses Hanabusa
read .. Check Again After Aug 11
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