Tea Party Maui leaders call for special prosecutor to investigate IRS

Hawaii Appeals Court Thwarts State's Massive Land Grab

Survey Shows Slipping Confidence in Hawaii County PD

Want Land? DLNR Will Buy it for You

JSC Announces Nominees for 1st Circuit Court

IRS scandal driving interest in Hawaii GOP

KITV: "To be singled out and targeted, it's very discouraging and it's a scary thing going forward," said Dylan Nonaka, a partner with The Kahua Group, a political consulting firm with close ties to Hawaii conservatives. "Why would any young person, or old person for that matter, want to be involved in politics if they're going to be looked at and singled out by the IRS?"

However, the brewing scandal may be having the reverse effect. Hawaii Republican Party Executive Director Nacia Blom says interest in the GOP has grown noticeably ever since news about the IRS controversy first broke May 7.

"We haven't seen any membership drops or anything," Blom told KITV4. "In fact, I think it's had the exact opposite effect. A lot more people are saying this is enough and you guys have an answer. 'How can the Hawaii Republican Party help us?'

read ... 2014

$15M new tax credit excludes most local film productions

KITV: movie productions will be able to claim a credit of up to $15 million....

to qualify for the credits, a company has to spend a minimum of $200,000 which he said is way above the budget for the smaller, local players.

The new tax credit rises from 15 to 20 percent for films made on Oahu, and up to 25 percent for films made on the neighbor islands.  And the credit is good through Jan. 1, 2019.

read ... Effect of new tax credit on local film productions

City Hikes Building Permit Fees 20%, Makes Excuse

SA: The fee, calculated at 20 percent of the total building permit fee, will be collected when the application is submitted. Mayor Kirk Caldwell on Friday signed Bill 15, which implements the fee....

read ... Fee Hike

Sovereignty Activists Bust Competing Drug Dealer

HNN: After his arrest John Zachary Toyofuku told authorities he knew the shipping container had a lot of drugs. He called it a "suicide mission" saying if he didn't do it "he would be in a lot of trouble." He's in a different kind of trouble now.

Approximately 176 pounds of marijuana were found a week ago. The pot had labels with names like "grand daddy" and "blue berry." It was brought in via shipping container from San Leandro, California. Then somehow the container made it to Anonui Street near the Royal Kunia Golf Course.  (Odd.  No parking on Anonui St.)

That's where court documents say members of the "Kingdom of Hawaii Marshals" (ie competing drug dealers) somehow opened it up and found the drugs. They then reported it to police....  (Reported it to HPD?)

In this case the Drug Enforcement Agency was able to arrest John Zachary Toyofuku. Court documents say he was the person who came to pick up the drugs.

Authorities also searched his Woodlawn Drive home in Manoa where they found several more empty baggies believed to be the previous shipment.

They also found notes referring to 144 pounds at $3,700 a pound for a total of $532,000. There was another note totaling shipments worth more than $1.5 million.

That money is still missing although they didn't search the house until five days after his arrest and appeared to be cleaned out. (Yep.  They must have reported it to HPD.  Whose cousin is Zach?)

Toyofuku was released to a halfway house today. His attorney is still figuring out who the Kingdom of Hawaii Marshals are and how they knew what they knew.  (Uh-huh.)

Question: Why was this guy back out on the streets? 

• John Zachary Toyofuku 2010: An Oahu grand jury added robbery, assault and two more kidnapping charges against a Big Island man accused of abducting and holding hostage two other men during the weekend.
• More from 2010: One man is arrested and more suspects are sought in bizarre weekend abductions
• And more: Police arrest one suspect, hunt for another in connection with Kailua kidnapping
• Police investigate possible link between Kailua kidnapping and Big Island drug ring

read ... Native Hawaiian "Marshals" credited with finding huge amount of pot

Medicaid Buy-In Task Force to Meet 

The Medicaid Buy-In Task Force will reconvene to continue discussions on the Medicaid Buy-In proposal.  No public testimony will be accepted.

Read ... Announcement

State tax revenues up 9.9 percent, latest figures show

SA: The state Department of Taxation reported today that state tax collections are up 9.9 percent through May, eleven months into the fiscal year.

The collections are higher than the 6.7 percent revenue growth projected by the state Council on Revenues for fiscal year 2013, which ends in June.

General excise and use taxes are up 9.7 percent. Hotel-room taxes are up 13.4 percent. Individual income taxes are up 13.9 percent.

DoTax: Tax Cuts Effective June 30, 2013

read ... Mo Money

Hawaii hotel occupancy declines, rates rise more than 10%

PBN: Hotels in Hawaii had a statewide occupancy rate of 72.7 percent during the week ended June 8, which was 2.8 percentage points lower than the same week a year ago. The statewide average daily room rate, however, rose 10.5 percent to $215.13.

Oahu hotels saw the greatest gains in rates last week, with the average daily room rate rising 13.8 percent to $204.12, while occupancy slipped 1.9 percentage points to 81.8 percent.

The average daily room rate at Maui hotels rose 6.8 percent to $253.98, while occupancy declined by 2 percentage points to 68.4 percent.

On the Big Island, occupancy declined by 5.9 percentage points to 55 percent, while the average daily room rate rose 6 percent to $189.13.

And on Kauai, occupancy fell 6.2 percentage points to 60.5 percent at Garden Isle hotels, which saw average daily room rates increase 6.6 percent to $219.12.

read ... In Decline

Epic Fail: Solar Scammers Thrown Out of Court

KITV: A major win for the state tax office Friday after a Circuit Court judge threw out a lawsuit challenging a decision to reduce solar tax credits for homeowners and businesses.

The state maintained it was losing too much money and needed to curb the tax breaks. The Sierra Club sued to invalidate the rules but the judge dismissed the suit.

"The reason why the court dismissed the case is that the court agreed with the state that it did not have the legal authority or jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit," said Hugh Jones, Supervising Deputy Attorney in the Tax Division of the Hawaii Attorney General's office.

Jones said if a taxpayer lost out on a credit, the legal recourse would be to go to tax appeals court.

read ... Lawsuit challenging solar tax credit reduction thrown out

Obama's Big Mouth May Set 100s of Military Rapists Free

SAS: Two defendants in military sexual assault cases cannot be punitively discharged, if found guilty, because of “unlawful command influence” derived from comments made by President Barack Obama, a judge ruled in a Hawaii military court this week.

Navy Judge Cmdr. Marcus Fulton ruled during pretrial hearings in two sexual assault cases — U.S. vs. Johnson and U.S. vs. Fuentes — that comments made by Obama as commander in chief would unduly influence any potential sentencing, according to a court documents obtained by Stars and Stripes....

“I think that as a defense attorney, I would raise this argument in virtually any [sexual assault] case I had,” said Victor Hansen, vice president of the National Institute of Military Justice and former instructor at the Army’s JAG school.

Hansen found Thursday’s ruling surprising, since judges have rejected “unlawful command influence” arguments under the logic that statements by high-level officials lose their effect as they reach the military’s lower levels.

However, in recent months there has been a lot more said — and in overly specific terms — about sexual assault by military and political leaders, Hansen noted. Obama’s call for dishonorable discharges is an example of such specificity, which begins to sound to military juries like a direct order from the commander in chief.

“This is bad lawyering on [Obama’s] advisor’s part,” Hansen said. “It’s certainly not a problem to say that sexual assault is a bad thing and we need to weed it out … that’s innocuous. It’s when they get very pointed that it’s problematic.”

Last year, Marine Corps defendants in more than 60 sexual assault cases filed unlawful command influence claims following comments by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos, according to a May 9 McClatchy Tribune news report.

In one speech, Amos declared that 80 percent of sexual assault claims were legitimate, according to the report. Judges in nearly all of the 60 disputed cases found the appearance of unlawful command influence, according to the McClatchy report.

CB: Gabbard Criticizes Blocking Of Her Sexual Assault Bill

read ... Big Mouth

Star-Adv Helps Hanabusa Tout $400M in Military Construction

SA: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014, which passed by a House vote of 315-108, provides $400 million for military construction in Hawaii and prohibits any additional rounds of base realignment and closure.

"The hard work that went into completing the 2014 NDAA reflects our commitment to the safety and security of the United States," said Hana­busa, a member of the House Armed Services Committee who voted in favor of the bill.

read ... Free Campaign Advert

Hawaii leads way in ethnicity data

SA: What's stunning is that it's only been since 2007 that the federal DOE started separating Asian-Americans from Pacific Islanders and Native Hawai- ians for data collection.

Their differences are about as wide as the Pacific. Between 2006 and 2010, about three-quarters of Taiwanese-Americans and more than half of Korean-Americans 25 and older had a college degree, a marker achieved by only 10 percent of Samoans and 12 percent of Laotian-Americans of the same age....

In mainland states where communities have much smaller Asian-Pacific Islander populations, getting a better count without violating privacy by identifying individual families has been challenging, officials have said. Fortunately, Hawaii has an advantage here and can serve a leadership role in helping Americans broadly to better understand these groups.

The University of Hawaii has been creating separate data sets for Asian and Pacific Islander groups for years, a response to public concern about lower achievement in education and earning power among Native Hawaiians and some Asian groups, particularly Filipinos.

Speaking at the D.C. gathering, Pearl Imada Iboshi, who heads the UH Institutional Research and Analysis Office, said further study showed Native Hawaiians falling 9 percentage points behind other groups in the six-year graduation rate. The result: UH has made outreach to Native Hawaiian college readiness and support a priority.

read ... Hawaii leads way in ethnicity data

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