VIDEO: Hawaii Shipping--Unpacking Hawaii’s Maritime Supply Chain
Manufactured Homes for Lahaina Fire Recovery
Identifying a Nightmare for Both Right and Left
UH: Hensel Shows she can Outmaneuver Academic Race Hustlers
CB: … In 2019, Hensel (a white chick) left her position as dean of the law school to become Georgia State University’s provost. She appointed Leslie Wolf, another (white chick) Georgia State law professor and friend of hers, to replace her as the law school dean. Washington (a black chick) questioned Hensel about that move, setting off what Washington called “patronizing, implicit bias hand in hand with explicit disparate treatment” targeted at her (a cat fight).
(TRANSLATION: Washington wanted the job so she played the race card.)
According to an August 2021 letter drafted by Washington’s attorney, Julie Oinonen, the problems began after Washington challenged Hensel about Wolf’s appointment during a faculty meeting in 2020. According to the letter, Washington asked how Wolf’s proposed appointment as permanent law school dean without an open search promoted Georgia State’s commitment to diversity in faculty hires.
(TRANSLATION: Visualize McCoy importation specialist Ken Lawson denouncing UH Richardson Dean Camille Nelson for being Jamaican, then getting kicked off campus. Hensel can handle this kind of game.)
Soon after the meeting, Washington received notice from Hensel rejecting Washington for a fellowship that a selection committee had unanimously recommended she receive, the letter says.
Things came to a head after Wolf gave Washington a negative post-tenure job review, despite a unanimous positive review from a faculty committee. Washington objected that Wolf had not cited five amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court that Washington had co-authored, including one that the court cited in its landmark Obergefell decision supporting same-sex marriage.
“Despite Professor Washington’s impressive body of work, Professor Wolf and Provost Hensel — both White females and close, personal friends — have repeatedly derogated their Black, female colleague’s accomplishments and contributions, and denigrated her professional work file, adversely impacting her professional reputation and causing her significant anxiety and emotional distress,” the letter says.
(TRANSLATION: Washington wanted the job so she played the race card.)
In late 2021, following a hearing with witnesses on both sides, a college of law hearing panel vindicated Washington by finding that Wolf’s report had improperly failed to credit Washington’s amicus briefs as scholarship and had also arbitrarily failed to mention a university-wide award Washington had won.
During the hearing, Washington’s lawyer demonstrated how metadata in Wolf’s review showed that the document had actually been created by Hensel, who was then Georgia State’s provost, just weeks before Wolf sent the document to Washington under Wolf’s name….
(TRANSLATION: Hensel stood up against this phony hustle.)
CB: UH President Finalist Denies Allegations Of Bias By Black Law Professor --Hensel stressed that Washington’s complaint had nothing to do with Hensel and that such disputes are commonplace at universities. “It was a non-event,” she said.
CB: Civil Beat: How Profiling A Candidate For UH President Turned Up A ‘Serious’ Complaint
CB: Law Professor: UH President Candidate Is Lying About Discrimination Complaint
REALITY: VIDEO: Finalist for UH President pushes 'Critical Race Theory'
PDF: Ken Lawson vs UH 1st Amended Complaint KLL.pdf (hawaiifreepress.com)
read … UH President Candidate Targeted Black Law Professor For Speaking Out, Complaint Says - Honolulu Civil Beat
HART gives green light to begin design phase for next Honolulu rail segment
HNN: … Design work will begin immediately and construction is set for late next year.
The new segment is slated to be complete in 2030 and transferred to the Department of Transportation Services in 2031 ….
SA: HART officially proceeds on final Skyline segment
read … HART gives green light to begin design phase for next Honolulu rail segment
Honolulu Airport 4th Worst
SA: … Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, the largest in the state, moved up in a ranking of large airports, but it’s still fourth from the bottom, according to the latest J.D. Power North America Airport Satisfaction Study.
Honolulu airport’s satisfaction score this year was 593 out of a possible 1,000. Michael Taylor, managing director of travel, hospitality and retail at J.D. Power, said the Honolulu airport improved from the second-worst-ranked airport in 2023, 2022 and 2020 in the large-airport category, which includes airports with 10 million to 32.9 million passengers per year. Data was too limited in 2021 to conduct a survey.
Only Philadelphia International Airport, Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport and St. Louis Lambert International Airport were rated worse out of the 28 large airports measured in the 2024 satisfaction study, which is in its 19th year….
read … Honolulu airport moves up in passenger satisfaction, but still 4th worst
Rapist gets OCCC work furlough – now on the lam
KITV: … Shaun Fleetwood, 43, is a work furlough inmate at Oahu Community Correctional Center. Investigators say Fleetwood was allowed to leave Module 20 Tuesday morning on a furlough pass but was supposed to return by 10 a.m.
The Department of Law Enforcement (DLE) Sheriffs Division and the Honolulu Police Department were notified when he failed to return.
Fleetwood is 6-feet tall and weighs approximately 177 pounds. He has green eyes and brown hair, but shaves his head bald. Investigators say he is serving time for second-degree sexual assault and was scheduled for a parole hearing in December 2024. He is now facing a new charge for second-degree escape -- a Class B felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Despite the seriousness of his conviction, authorities say Fleetwood is a community custody inmate in the work furlough program with pass privileges. Community custody is the lowest classification status.
Anyone with information on Fleetwood’s whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Sheriffs Division at 808-586-1352….
NR: Public Alert | Hawaii Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Alerts (alertsense.com)
read … Authorities search for missing OCCC work furlough inmate serving time for sex assault
Hawaii Prisons are Full of Lunatics
CB: … The suicides are a symptom of what officials, staff and experts described as a mental health system in trouble again, nearly two decades after the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state for alleged “deliberate indifference” to mental health needs at the largest jail on Oahu.
Current and former employees identified at least nine clinical psychologists and psychologists-in-training who have left the correctional system since 2022, an alarming rate of departure that has left facilities short-handed. The department’s mental health branch administrator position also has been vacant since early this year.
“There is a huge mental health crisis in corrections right now. It’s massive,” said Kevan Kamisato, mental health section administrator at the Hilo jail. “We have aging facilities, populations which exceed the maximum counts, and a large population of inmates with mental health issues who are coming in and require extraordinary amounts of care.”
(SOLUTION: Reopen the insane asylums. Put the insane back inside.)
read … Hawaii's Prison System Confronts 'A Huge Mental Health Crisis' - Honolulu Civil Beat
Hawai‘i’s electricity problems expose a failed energy transition strategy
UD: … Almost a decade ago, people talked about Hawai‘i as a “glimpse of the promise and problems” of turning the electric grid green. Hawai‘i was a “postcard from the future.” Unfortunately, the postcard was ignored and Hawai‘i has become the posterchild for an expensive, unreliable and environmentally suboptimal generation and distribution system.
At 44 cents per kilowatt-hour, Hawai‘i residents pay the highest electric rates in the nation. Incredibly, this rate exceeds California’s second highest rates by almost 30% and is nearly triple the national average. And due to bad generating capacity buildout decisions and a monopolized wholesale generation market for firm power, Hawai‘i is plagued by electric outages. According to Department of Energy data, the state ranks 20th in the nation for reliability. To keep the system from completely failing, Hawaiian Electric Company regularly resorts to rolling blackouts and pressuring customers to conserve power. …
A Wall Street Journal review of regulatory records revealed that HECO knew as early as 2011 that it needed to upgrade its infrastructure, especially its increasingly unsafe utility poles. Replacing poles, burying power lines, monitoring vegetation and cutting back foliage when appropriate substantially reduces ignition risk from vegetation-power line contact. HECO just did not spend the money to do this. Concerned about blowback from ratepayers and legislators who are already worried about energy affordability, the Hawai‘ia PUC has been reluctant to push HECO to spend what was necessary to rehabilitate the grid and protect public safety….
read … Hawai‘i’s electricity problems expose a failed energy transition strategy
Handling human remains: Local forensic company breaks silence on Lahaina disaster response
HNN: … he says many of the recovery processes and procedures critical to accurately documenting the location of a person’s death and keeping those remains separate — so they’re not lost or confused with other sets of remains — weren’t followed….Records indicate the morning after the disaster, MPD leadership appointed an acting Captain as Lahaina’s daytime incident commander.
In an interview conducted as part of the Attorney General’s Maui Wildfire Investigation, that acting Captain told members of the Fire Safety Research Institute panel what he remembered about recovery efforts that first day.
“When I took over, there were a total of three. By the end of my first day, it was over 50,” said Jeremy Palone-Delatore.
The interviewer asked, “human remains?”
Palone-Delatore responded, “Correct.”
He went on to say, “We are identifying them. And recovering them. So, it kind of just evolved into officers picking up human remains and then transporting them to Lahaina Civic Center. Because Grey Tech, who’s the person that’s responsible for picking up the bodies, it wouldn’t be effective to have them keep coming. One. Get called. One, one, one. So we had to have a mass staging area.”
The interviewer asked Palone-Delatore if he had any experience, training or certifications for large incidents like this one that he brought with him.
Palone-Delatore responded, “As far as mass casualty events or training? No sir.”
Because the fire had touched nearly everything, Abarra says in many cases, people were unrecognizable, camouflaged in the ash and debris.
“That’s why you need qualified personnel who have experience and knows what partially cremated remains look like. To process these scenes in a dignified and efficient manner,” said Abarra.
In addition to police officers, multiple sources told HNN investigates officer recruits, still in training, were assigned to do the work….
HNN: Maui PD won’t discuss allegations it owes forensic morgue contractor more than $270K
read … Mishandling of human remains: Local forensic company breaks silence on Lahaina disaster response
Roth signs bill to expand housing availability
HTH: … Mayor Mitch Roth has signed County Council Bill 123, a piece of legislation aimed at increasing housing inventory.
The bill — co-drafted by council Chair Heather Kimball, Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz, Planning Director Zendo Kern and Deputy Director Jeff Darrow — allows homeowners to build up to three accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, with a size limit of 1,250 square feet on their properties….
SN: Bill 123 increases housing inventory across Hawaii County
read … Roth signs bill to expand housing availability
Election News:
Lahaina Fire News:
QUICK HITS: