August 5, 2009 News Read > Hawaii Free Press

Hawaii Daily News Read

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

August 5, 2009 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 5:59 AM :: 11103 Views

Socialized healthcare: Inouye plays ‘wait and see’ (Hawaii has a swing vote)

Hawai‘i Sen. Daniel Inouye has remained mostly silent on the issue, his representatives said Tuesday.
Lori Hamamoto, Inouye’s press secretary for national and international issues, and Ronald Sakoda, the senator’s Kaua‘i field representative, said in an interview at The Garden Island office that Inouye has yet to make up his mind.
“He is waiting to see ... what the (Finance) Committee comes up with,” Hamamoto said.

OHA's plans to shake down telescope

It is our understanding that the past subleases for other Mauna Kea observatories have been issued at the reduced rate of $1 per year with UH receiving in-kind viewing at the observatories. OHA has concerns that this practice only benefits one state agency and prevents the DLNR and OHA from receiving a substantial amount of income....

(Demands for $50M per year have been raised)

Hawaii state workers may face more layoffs

The HGEA and the UPW's public-safety units have the right to go to binding arbitration if contract talks stall. Yesterday was the deadline for the parties to present final written positions to the arbitration panel, and the state submitted its final offer. The HGEA has asked for an extension until Monday. The UPW's status was not available.

Arbitration hearings are scheduled for Sept. 4 for HGEA and Sept. 11 for UPW.

State House Speaker Calvin Say, D-20th (St. Louis Heights, Palolo Valley, Wilhelmina Rise), urged the governor and union leaders to find a solution that avoids layoffs.

(Great idea! The unions can still agree to furloughs any time they want.)

RELATED: Lingle gets rolling on layoffs

A total of 666 will come from the Human Services and Health departments.

Big Isle keeps eye on Hurricane Felicia

HGEA tries to snag hurricane fund.

Home Lands trial under way

Kane'ohe resident Caroline Bright said she applied for a residential homestead in 1959 only to learn two years later that there was no record of her application. Now 85, Bright said she later applied for homesteads on Moloka'i and the Big Island and was offered a lease in Kona in the 1990s. But by then, she testified, she had retired and could no longer afford to pay for it.

The single mother of four eventually managed to build on a non-DHHL property on the Windward side.

"We had to put in our own roadway, the drainage and everything else," she said.

Questions asked by state attorneys indicated that DHHL tried unsuccessfully to contact Bright several times over the years.

As of June 30, there were 19,886 Native Hawaiians waiting for residential leases. The 2,700 represented in the lawsuit went before a state-appointed review panel created in 1991 to resolve claims for the period between Aug. 21, 1959, and June 30, 1988.

That panel ran out of money before nearly all the claims were dealt with.

Chinatown opposition may block housing for Honolulu homeless

A proposed $10.6 million city project to build a 100-unit affordable housing development in Chinatown that would help chronically homeless people become permanent wards of non-profits and therefore a source of funding is in jeopardy after facing community opposition.

By placing the shelter in the middle of the downtown/Chinatown area, the homeless industry will maximize its visibility and therefore its income--just as they did in LA's skid row area.

Planning panel breezes through 20-year ‘needs,’ ‘desires’ of isles

"I want to clarify that the countywide policy plan contains no maps," Bosco said. (This is easy because it is meaningless fluff.)

Kobayashi Council Campaign Banned from Wikipedia.com

The weirdest part of this story--it was released by AK's own campaign!

Money does the talking, but votes do the walking

Another Democrat Borreca article directing all the attention to the Democrat primary race and just barely mentioning the Republican candidate. This is the journalistic expression of the one-party system.

100-year-old piece of equipment replaced at Wainiha hydroplant

While everyone babbles about wind, solar and wave energy this is where almost all of Kauai's 'renewable' energy comes from.

Mediated Settlement Reached in Ka Loko Dam Breach Civil Cases, Court Documents Show

While the civil litigation is being finalized, this isn’t the end of the story for the victims and witnesses of the breach or the defendants. James Pflueger, 83, founder of the Pflueger auto chain, was indicted last November on criminal charges related to the breach including 7 counts of Manslaughter and 1 count of Reckless Endangerment in the First Degree. His trial has been rescheduled several times from June 2009, to August 2009, to October 2009 – and now is set for May 2010.