Gabbard Lahaina Charity Spends only 34% on Fire Victims
HB202: A Stealthy Unemployment Insurance Tax Hike
Hawaii End Meth Summit
Hawaii Family Forum Legislative Week in Review
SB1269: Mililani Trask’s Geothermal Scam Comes Back for More Millions
HTH: … State proposals to pursue geothermal development on the Big Island are still going st(w)rong.
(REALITY: The IDG geothermal scam goes all the way back to Unity House. That's how old this bs is. How many times will legislators be bought off by the same scammers running the same scam?)
Two bills in the Legislature, House Bill 1307 and Senate Bill 1269, would allocate funds to two different state agencies — the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands and the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, respectively — to investigate options for geothermal production.
(CLUE: The DEBDT Bill is a Sen Dela Cruz scam to have DBEDT‘s Dane Wicker funnel money via HTDC to Mililani Trask. No geothermal ever gets built. Trask’s IDG group has been running this same scam for 15 years. They’ve made millions writing useless reports.)
Ultimately, Murphy (an un-registered lobbyist being paid to lobby for this by IDG under a $2.5M contract from DBEDT’s HTDC) strongly supports SB 1269 in particular, because it — unlike HB 1307 — specifically calls for DBEDT to explore the commercial viability of utility-scale geothermal production.
(CLUE: IDG owner, Unity House convicted felon Roberta Cabral, is a max donor to Sen Dela Cruz. BOP Inmate #87755-022.)
“We can’t just be doing science for its own sake,” Murphy said, explaining that, if Hawaii is to meet its goal of being 100% powered by renewable energy by 2035, commercial investment needs to be involved.
(TRANSLATION He wants the money to go to IDG, not UH.)
He added that, with IDG’s access to the University of Auckland’s Geosciences Department — a world-class resource, he said — DBEDT and IDG are in the best position to go forward….
(TRANSLATION: All the New Zealand talk is a distraction. SB1269 is the IDG slush-fund vehicle which results in no geothermal. To build geothermal, pass HB1307.)
IDG SCHEMERS BACKGROUND:
read … Geothermal bills advance
HB141: Stop Republicans from Appointing Sovereignty Activists to Election Commission
CB: … the contentious meetings have not gone unnoticed. House Bill 141, which passed the House on Thursday, would make the members of the commission subject to Senate confirmation. The idea is to vet potential commissioners to ensure that they will serve the state’s elections process fairly.
(This is what happens when Republicans appoint representatives from ‘Klean House Hawaii’—a group led by sovereignty activists who actually filed multiple lawsuits seeking removal of the Republican Party from the ballot with the idea of making the Aloha Aina Party Hawaii’s second party. GENIUS-LEVEL IDEA FOR REPUBLICANS: Don’t appoint your enemies to represent you.)
Whether the bill will be enough to take the rage and partisanship out of elections commission meetings is an open question. While election denial conspiracies that followed the 2020 presidential election have largely disappeared nationally following Donald Trump’s convincing reelection in November, they continue in Hawaiʻi, one of the bluest of states ….
REALITY: Can Hawaii Republicans Stop Vexatious Litigants?
REALITY: 'FBI' Chain Letter Scheme Entraps Hawaii Republicans and Libertarians
read … Tension And Turmoil At The Hawaiʻi Elections Commission
SB1618: Repent, journalists, repent or face senatorial payback
Shapiro: … Democrats everywhere express alarm about threats to our free press as Donald Trump restricts who can cover the White House, corporate-owned media pay him bribes in the form of lawsuit settlements and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos shreds the editorial page to curry favor.
“A free and independent press is essential to holding those in power accountable,” said Hawaii Democratic Chair Derek Turbin.
But another prominent local Democrat, state Sen. Donna Mercado Kim, is padding in a different direction. She’s proposed a Trumpish bill to regulate Hawaii journalists, imposing fines or bans on those who displease the state.
Senate Bill 1618 is blatantly unconstitutional and has little chance of passing, but it’s notable because it’s all about pique over coverage and commentary she’s received, from a legislator I once described as “perpetually perturbed.”…
RELATED: The Secret History of the Mercado Kim Crime Family
read … David Shapiro: Repent, journalists, repent or face senatorial payback
Billionaires Behind Hawaii News Sites
CB: … Hughes is no stranger to these islands. In 2005 he founded American Commercial Equities, which acquires and manages properties in Hawaiʻi and California. It owns Aina Haina Shopping Center in east Oʻahu.
The Blog only found one Hawaiʻi political contribution by Hughes — he gave $4,000 to Trevor Ozawa’s successful campaign for the Honolulu City Council in 2014.
(CLUE: Ozawa was Miske’s lawyer.)
The Aloha State Daily newsroom is run by A. Kam Napier, former editor-in-chief of Pacific Business News who was also a longtime editor at Honolulu Magazine. He brought along his former associate editor at PBN, Kelsey Kukaua Medeiros, now a “senior editor reporting on community news.”…
Civil Beat’s billionaire founders, Pierre and Pam Omidyar have donated pretty heavily to Democrat candidates and PACs especially in recent years, our own scroll through the FEC data site shows. Although they did donate to George Bush in 1999. Civil Beat has been a nonprofit for more than 13 years and their foundation currently provides about a third of our funding….
Omidyar Having it Both Ways:
read … The Sunshine Blog: Latest Hawaiʻi News Site Has Some Red State Roots - Honolulu Civil Beat
SB1553: Hawaiian Home Lands looks to factory-built housing for projects
SA: … The University of Hawaii’s Pacific Aerospace Center Program previously operated from Hangar 111 at the Kalaeloa Airport but closed in 2016. The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands wants to buy the hangar to set up a modular housing factory on the property…
SB 1553 proposes to force the University of Hawaii to sell the hangar site to DHHL and to provide an unspecified appropriation for the purchase….
read … Hawaiian Home Lands looks to factory-built housing for projects | Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Young Bros Rate Hikes Kill off County Fairs
HTH: … Another impediment is the cost of shipping E.K. Fernandez Shows’ carnival rides and midway of games from Oahu to Hawaii Island via Young Brothers, the state’s only interisland ocean cargo company.
During the pandemic’s lockdown phase in 2020, the state Public Utilities Commission granted Young Brothers an emergency 46% rate increase aimed at generating an extra $27 million in annual revenue the company said it needed to avoid shutting down.
Young Brothers applied for additional rate increases in October 2024, including 35% for containers shipped to and from Hilo. That case remains open with the PUC.
“Young Brothers and the cost of shipping has made it ridiculously expensive for us to even think of having a fair come to the outer islands … ,” Chang said. “When you’re looking at $500,000 to $600,000 to ship Fernandez’s carnivals, his rides and equipment to another island, it’s ridiculous, in my opinion.”
Scott Fernandez, E.K. Fernandez’s president, told the Tribune-Herald in 2022 that he used to travel to Hilo for about $250,000, but last week confirmed those days are gone.
read … No county fair this year: It could return in 2026, but cost remains the problem - Hawaii Tribune-Herald
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