TelAbortion: Hawaii Doctors, Lawyers Plan the Abortion Future
The Jones Act: High Steaks
Can’t You Spare Half a Penny for Education?
Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted March 9, 2019
Rent Control: How Not to Create Affordable Housing
GET increase will add to Hawaii’s high cost of living
Ninth Circuit Wants To Know The Statute Of Limitations For Takings Claims In Hawaii
Hirono: Gabbard Tied to David Duke, Steve Bannon, Russia
Maui County’s top lawyer arrested for physical abuse
HNN: …the head of Maui County’s Department of the Corporation Counsel was arrested early Saturday morning for physical abuse.
Patrick Wong, 53, was taken into custody in Wailuku around 1:00 a.m. for the misdemeanor.
It is Hawaii News Now’s protocol to not name victims of domestic violence, but sources said she did suffer from injuries and she feared retaliation from Wong because of his position as Maui County’s top civil lawyer.
Sources say Wong has been charged by the Maui Police Department and is currently out on bail….
read … Maui County’s top lawyer arrested for physical abuse
Marijuana: Shiny Object Confused with Priority
Shapiro: Before the 2019 Legislature convened, the state Democratic Party listed legalizing recreational marijuana among its top three priorities for the session.
It seemed cockeyed to see it prioritized ahead of affordable housing, homelessness, climate change, health care, election reform and other pressing issues that were much further down the list or not included at all.
As often happens in politics, Democrats and other interest groups jumping on the recreational marijuana bandwagon were confusing a shiny new thing with a priority….
Our medical marijuana law is so liberal in defining qualifying health conditions that virtually any adult willing to go through the simple process of obtaining a state card — even tourists — can already buy marijuana legally for whatever use they wish.
There’s also the fine line of the state moving beyond legalizing marijuana to promoting its use in order to fill tax coffers; many questions remain about marijuana’s safety, and large-scale studies to answer them are just beginning….
read … Shiny Object
Product Bans are for the Silver Spoon People
Cataluna: … Instead of encouraging alternatives, the focus is currently on banning every convenience of modern life. The Legislature is all about bans these days. Bans on single-use plastic. Bans on straws. Bans on take-out containers. Bans on plastic forks.
Pretty soon we’re all going to be eating at home or being like Uncle Louie who carries around a metal camping fork in his pocket because you never know if somebody is going to bring cake and Uncle Louie wants his cake.
Everyone wants their cake. They want to eat chow fun and fried rice from food trucks but that’s tricky if there’s no single-use utensil involved. They want to buy pre-made meals at the store but how does one carry that home without Styrofoam or plastic involved? Hemp handbag? They want to buy plate lunch but everything about the way that gets served is threatened by a ban.
Plastic became the food and drink holders of choice because, as people got busier, tossing away something became easier and preferable to storing it and washing it after each use. It’s how people eat when they’re on a tight budget. It’s how people eat when they’re busy.
Who’s not busy and on a budget? Oh, the people over there eating on real china with silver spoons. Everybody else is going to have to deal with the inconveniences of all the bans or start feeding the family like it’s 1975…..
read … Silver Spoon
HB1326: Failure to Pass would Harm Electric Coop, Small Farmers
A grand bargain on vacation rentals?
SA: … the enforcement provisions in Bill 85 carefully follow the process that was recently used by San Francisco to reduce the number of illegal STRs in that city by 70 percent. It is also one of the few effective enforcement procedures that has withstood legal attack by Airbnb.
The bill would require that prior to providing booking services, hosting platforms such as HomeAway and Airbnb verify that the unit being rented is operating under a valid certificate of registration. The platform would also have to commit to making available the names of operators, the addresses of properties and dates of use for each unit. Hosting platforms that violated the requirements would be subject to a fine of between $25,000 and $50,000 for each violation….
Bill 89 would permit 3,000 B&Bs, restrict ownership of these units to natural people (i.e., not corporations), and limit each operator to one permit. Each B&B would be allowed to rent out no more than two bedrooms to no more than four guests at a time. No unhosted, whole-home rentals would be permitted. We currently have approximately 6,000 illegal STRs on island….
SA: Hawaii Tourism Authority shifts focus to managing tourism
read … A grand bargain on vacation rentals
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