Entries for June 2009

Inouye reported ownership of Central Pacific shares worth $350,000 to $700,000, some held by his wife, at the end of 2007 [5]. The shares represented at least two-thirds of Inouye's total reported assets. Inouye has requested a delay in filing his annual financial disclosure for 2008, which was due this spring, and he declined to provide the current value of his investment. Since the end of 2007, the bank's stock has lost 79 percent of its value.

Central Pacific was founded in 1954 by a group of World War II veterans including Inouye who were emerging leaders in Hawaii's Japanese American community.

Union leaders are playing with their members livelihoods! And they are calling for an increase in GE Taxes! The union bosses are pushing their membership to rally at the Capital June 30th, from 4:30 to 6:00 PM. We need you to call radio shows, write letters to the editor and call/email Senator Hanabusa and Speaker Say to let them know your cost of living is already too high. Want to be part of the solution? This is what YOU can do...

Specific areas of concern include bills that would extract more taxes from state residents (HB 1271, SB 1678 and HB 1544); impact end-of-life choices (HB 1379); curtail affordable housing choices (SB 1160 and SB 1350); and, remove the Public Utility Commission’s oversight to control basic telephone service (SB 603).

In addition, due to the unprecedented $2.7 billion revenue shortfall between now and June 30, 2011, as projected by the Council on Revenues, the Lingle-Aiona Administration has increased scrutiny of all bills for potential budgetary implications.  As a result, a number of bills were put on the potential veto list because they call for new or increased spending at a time when the State cannot afford to expand the cost of government or further deplete the State’s limited fiscal resources.  Twelve bills on the list fall into this category of potentially negative fiscal implications (HB 36, HB 343, HB 358, HB 982, HB 986, HB 989, HB 1504, HB 1809, SB 266, SB 423, SB 1248 and SB 1665).

Local, national and international representatives will gather to discuss topics about Hawai‘i’s past, present and future, including what Hawai‘i means to the world and the emerging role of our state in the global community in the next 50 years.  Major topics and themes that will be discussed throughout the conference include: the 21^st Century Economy, Education for the Next Generation, Energy for Tomorrow, Technology in Our Daily Lives, and Native Hawaiians: Cultural Navigation in a Sea of Change. 

Unite and inspire 80% of the Christian Church to register to vote in July of 2009.  Get 80% of the Christian Church to vote Christian values in November of 2010.  

“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population….” –Margaret Sanger, Founder, Planned Parenthood

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

HONOLULU – Governor Linda Lingle today released a list of judicial nominees that was provided to her by the Judicial Selection Commission to fill the position of chief judge of the Intermediate Court of Appeals.  Governor Lingle is making the list available to the public to encourage public comment on the nominees.

Sometimes you just have to laugh out loud at those who consider themselves to be "conscious, enlightened, and progressive".

Bermuda and Palau may not be the only beautiful tropical islands to host illegal Islamist combatants being released from US custody at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. If a Hawaii County Councilman and a Kauai County activist get their way, some would get a new home—and complete freedom--on two of Hawaii’s most beautiful islands.

Residents who are interested in serving on the advisory council for their respective island should submit a letter and resume to the appropriate liaison office by June 30, 2009.

“This is not something we want to do, but something we have to do to balance the state budget and address the unprecedented fiscal emergency we are in due to the projected $2.7 billion revenue shortfall,” Governor Lingle said.  “I appreciate the understanding of the State employees who will be affected by the furlough and admire the cooperation they have demonstrated in helping to ensure that state services will continue to be provided when the furlough plan begins on July 1.”

The executive order refers to the furlough plan announced on June 18, 2009, which describes furlough schedules of specific departments and agencies, and includes furlough calendars.

Independent estimates say that families could pay $3,000 more a year on energy and the entire plan would take $2 trillion from our economy in just over eight years.

Some of the biggest porkers in the House authorization bill were Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), with 17 projects worth $51,646,000...$3,500,000 by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) for BAE Systems in Honolulu, Hawaii...$2,550,000 by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) for whale and dolphin hearing....

Obama: "When a young woman gets shot on the street when she gets out of her car that's a problem."

McCain: "Today I and all America pays tribute to a brave young woman who was trying to exercise her fundamental human rights and was killed on the streets of Tehran.  All Americans are with her.  Our thoughts and our prayers are for her."

NBC's Chuck Todd: "The honeymoon is coming to an end for President Obama, but it's not personal. It's professional, as now the public appears to be judging the president on some of his actions."

A NYT poll, which predominantly questioned Obama voters, showed only 43% of Americans would be willing to pay $500 a year more in taxes to pay for universal coverage. And the NYT did not ask how many Americans would be willing to give up their current health plan (77% of Americans are satisfied with their current plan) in exchange for a government-run option.

A DailyKos/Research 2000 poll conducted June 15 to June 17 showed Abercrombie leading Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann in a Democratic primary match up of likely voters 42 to 22 percent, but 36 percent of voters were undecided. The poll's margin of error is 4 percentage points....

The poll showed Abercrombie's general election race could be more competitive than the state's typically Democratic lean would suggest. Abercrombie, who is serving his 10th full term in office, led Republican Lieutenant Gov. James "Duke" Aiona 45 to 36 percent with 19 percent undecided in a hypothetical general election match-up.

According to the US Chamber of Commerce, regulating carbon through the Clean Air Act would expose at least one million mid-sized commercial buildings to draconian environmental regulations. One-fifth of all food service businesses, one-third of all health care businesses, one-half of the entire lodging industry, and even 10% of all buildings used for worship would be under the EPA’s hammer.

“The primary goal in developing the furlough plans for each department was to achieve the required operational savings, while minimizing disruption to public services,” said Governor Lingle.  “I recognize the impact the furloughs will have on many employees and their families.  This is not something we want to do, but something we have to do to balance the state budget.  We appreciate the public’s understanding and patience as our state employees adjust to the new schedules.”

Based on the assumption that this latest missile is a two- or three-stage type and has capability equal or superior to the long-range ballistic missile North Korea launched in April, the (Japan) Defense Ministry predicted the possibility of a launch toward Hawaii, with a launch toward Okinawa Prefecture and Guam also seen a possibility.

If it took the Okinawan path, when the first-stage booster detaches it could fall in the vicinity of a Chinese coastal area and might anger China.  In the case of the Guam path, the missile must overfly South Korea and Japan's Chugoku and Shikoku regions, which means the booster would be dumped onto a land area.

Yesterday the White House release a report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, finding that “Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.” Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) told The Hill, “The findings released today add urgency to the growing momentum in Congress for legislation that cuts global warming pollution.” Do they really? Is there any evidence in the report that global warming legislation will prevent any of the changes the report identifies? Is there any evidence in the report that the costs of global warming legislation will be offset by its benefits? No and no.

As hundreds of UH system president nominees whittled down to only one ethically-challenged candidate, many Hawaii political observers wondered how MRC Greenwood became the only choice left for UH system President. The short answer is political interference playing against the UH liberal arts faculty’s lack of respect for academic freedom.

On one side: Dan Inouye and his BoR cronies seeking a candidate who will defend federally-funded projects such as UARC, and the Thirty Meter Telescope, and defend UH biotech research on behalf of Hawaii’s contribution-rich biotech industry. On the other: the academic left’s open lack of respect for the academic freedom of anybody they disagree with—including those who wish to study plant biotechnology or do military-funded research.

The episodic challenges necessitated by Inouye’s political requirements contrast with many other US universities such as Greenwood’s former stomping grounds, UC Santa Cruz, which have simply caved into the demands of the left and no longer make any serious pretense of academic freedom.

Perhaps what we need today is a bunch of ambitious young men eager to improve the State who will decide to infiltrate and re-direct the Republican Party. 

On the eve of Friday’s election in Iran, President Barack Obama told reporters: “We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways.” But almost immediately after the polls closed, election authorities miraculously claimed to have counted millions of paper ballots and named the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner.

While John McCain was being tortured as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, First Unitarian Church of Honolulu -- at which the elementary-age Obama would later attend Sunday school after returning from Indonesia in 1970 or 71 -- was sheltering deserters and AWOLs recruited by ‘flirty fishing' coeds from a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) group known as "The Resistance".  The deserters' exploits were front page news for months on end in mid-1969 Honolulu.  They were also proudly trumpeted by the Honolulu SDS tabloid, "The Roach". 

The contrast between the war hero POW and the Obama deserters' church would have made a pretty good campaign commercial.  But nobody in Honolulu spoke up to claim Obama's First Unitarian connection until after Election Day. 

With Obama’s White House counsel Greg Craig and GTMO Shutdown Czar Daniel Fried riding shotgun—plus the detainees two personal attorneys--a US plane landed Thursday in Bermuda to offload four Chinese Muslim Uighurs who allegedly trained with al-Qaeda and were captured in Afghanistan on the field of combat at Tora Borah in December, 2001.

Palau is the Obama’s administration’s next stop. Seventeen more Uighurs from Tora Bora are to be dumped there. That will total 21 jihadi head-choppers who have been granted residence at US taxpayer expense on beautiful tropical islands after facing American soldiers in combat alongside al-Qaeda at Tora Borah.  Palauans have the right to travel and work in the United States under the terms of the Compact of Free Association. 

Campaigning for his health care plan yesterday, President Barack Obama told a Green Bay, Wisconsin audience: “Right now a number of my Republican friends have said, ‘We can’t support anything with a public option.’ It’s not clear that it’s based on any evidence as much as it is their thinking, their fear, that somehow once you have a public plan that government will take over the entire health care system.” In fact, the opposite is true. It is President Obama who is operating on rhetoric without any evidence to back up his claims.

“It’s essentially an enabling act” that would allow Native Hawaiians OHA cronies the chance to manage land and assets as they see fit, Abercrombie said. “When the land wasn’t worth anything and there was no money, nobody cared.  (When was that?  1848?  Overthrowing the Mahele, Neil?)  Now that the land is worth a considerable amount of money, now all of a sudden, everybody is OHA cronies are interested.”

Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood, chancellor emerita of the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been named president of the University of Hawai‘i System.

The world's biggest borrow-and-spender swears off financial irresponsibility (again) ...

Nine days after Greenwood’s resignation on November 4, the Chronicle finally began publishing a series of stories that Dynes had tried to get ahead of. Starting with the stunning fact that 8,500 staffers had collected at least $20,000 each in unreported bonuses and extra pay in the previous year, Schevitz and Wallack methodically cracked open a secret culture of executive compensation more widespread than anyone could have imagined. At the heart of the series was a blockbuster number Wallack had teased out of payroll data. According to his calculations, $871 million had been “quietly handed out” in “administrative stipends, bonuses, and other hidden cash compensation.” There was a veritable canyon between UC’s reported salaries (plus overtime) and the total payroll.

Congratulations UH!  This is who you are about to hire.

The $725.3 million bond sale included $500 million of new money proceeds to fund new capital improvement projects and $225.3 million of refunding bonds to refinance outstanding debt.  The refinancing of existing debt resulted in a reduction in debt service of approximately $100 million per year in fiscal years 2010 and 2011.  The overall interest rate for the bonds was 4.12 percent.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service cited, as one of the State’s credit strengths, “management’s well-established, proactive budget monitoring practices, including frequent revenue forecast updates from the Council on Revenues, which facilitates prompt identification of potential budget adjustments.”

The legislature voted to impose almost $521 million in new taxes on residents and visitors. It was just one in a flurry of moves that will slow economic recovery and lead to greater job losses.

Most troubling was that legislators did not have to raise taxes on our businesses and hard-working families. Our Administration provided them with a credible alternative to closing the state’s budget gap without raising taxes, cutting essential services or laying off government workers.

Even Democrats are beginning to question the integrity of the Obama administration’s economic claims. Grilling Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) said:

You created a situation where you cannot be wrong. If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would’ve lost 5.5 million jobs. If we create a million jobs, you can say, well, it would have lost 2.5 million jobs. You’ve given yourself complete leverage where you cannot be wrong, because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct.

Hawaii could add 7,000 new jobs at no cost to taxpayers if the federal estate tax were repealed, according to a new analysis by SmartBusiness Hawaii (SBH) and the SBH Entrepreneurial Education Foundation.

Hawaii Right To Life - Hilo Chapter is planning a Family Life Issues Conference. The conference is to be held Friday 6/26/09 6:30pm until 9:30pm, and Saturday 6/27/09 from 10am until 5:00pm at the Saint Joseph Gym in Hilo.

The purpose of this conference, which will be entirely funded by Hawaii Right To Life - Hilo Chapter, is to build an ecumenical network to link together for the purpose of a unified front in response to legislation that may be introduced that opposes traditional, Constitutional, moral Judeo-Christian principles.

Eat your heart out Jack Abramoff.  President Obama looks forward to a guaranteed supply of Democrat campaign money which will make the imprisoned Republican fundraiser look like the small time operator he was.  And better yet, Obama's multi-billion dollar nationwide scheme to circumvent campaign spending laws comes neatly disguised as a Hawaii-only deal for "reconciliation" and "justice".  "Campaign finance" isn't even in the bill's description.  It is called the Akaka Bill.

Contrary to popular opinion, Indian reservations have a history in Hawaii. An Oct. 12, 1999, article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin describes the 1995 efforts by corrupt trustees controlling America’s largest charitable trust — Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate (KSBE) — to evade state and federal oversight. And not without reason: trustees’ salaries were over $1 million per year. KSBE money, along with trustees’ personal funds, had been invested in a pornographic website. Spending on the Kamehameha School was being cut. One trustee was running rampant in the school, micromanaging teachers and administrators. The trustees’ self-dealing and their investments with Goldman Sachs — at the time headed by current New Jersey Democratic Governor John Corzine — had brought losses of $264 million in 1994 alone. Investigators were starting to ask questions. Hawaiians were beginning to protest. The trustees’ plan? Get the IRS and the state attorney general off their backs by moving KSBE’s legal domicile to an Indian reservation.

The last time Congress debated fundamental health care reform, America’s health insurance industry fought against more government control of your health care, most famously with the “Harry and Louise” ad depicting a typical middle class family in despair. This time around, however, the health insurance industry is supporting more government control of your health care. Why? Because key reformers are offering to use government coercion to force fifty million Americans to become new health insurance customers. What industry wouldn’t want the government to create 50 million new customers overnight?

A ritual exercise in self-loathing that has become a hallmark of the Obama administration....

In the spring of 1989, millions of Chinese peacefully seized control of their own capital and demanded democracy. After then-Premier Li Peng declared martial law on May 19th, the people of Beijing, not just students, responded by setting up bus and truck barricades to protect the demonstrators’ command post in Tiananmen Square. But on the morning of June 4th, 20 years ago today, China’s rulers sent in tanks and soldiers to regain control. The Chinese government claims only 241 people died that day, but the Chinese Red Cross puts the number at 2,600.

 (In light of the reference to the 1796 "Treaty of Tripoli" in Obama's Cairo speech, we are re-publishing this January, 2007 article.  It details the levels of tribute excated by the Moslems after the signing of the treaty and the two wars which resulted.

Obama in Cairo: "In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, 'The United States has in itself no character of enemity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.'"  How did these fine words work out 213 years ago?  How will similar fine words work out today?  See the story below.)

Speaking in Turkey, April 6, President Obama claimed: "We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation."  This is not new.  Obama has delivered similar remarks going back to at least 2008.  These are usually coupled with "we are not a (or--We are also a) Jewish nation, Muslim nation, Buddhist nation, nation of unbelievers, etc"  

But in Germany June 3, as he prepared to travel to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama changed his meme--announcing "The US is one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.”

Toby Harnden of the UK Telegraph writes:

As ABC's Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller astutely outline here, the Obama administration is embracing the new president's inner Muslim, as it were. Deputy national security adviser stated that Obama had "experienced Islam on three continents...growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans [are] a key part of Illinois and Chicago".

So that's once, twice, three times a Muslim?

Tomorrow at 6:10 AM EST, (12:10AM HST) President Barack Obama will deliver a keynote address at Cairo University. If past experience is any guide, he will continue apologizing for America’s “mistakes” and bend over backward trying to explain that the United States is not a threat to Islam. The President has already apologized for his country to nearly 3 billion people across Europe, the Muslim world and the Americas.

ABC News reports that federal investigators "are engaged in an intense effort to reconstruct Muhammad's path to extremism -- and allegedly to murder -- taking apart his life, examining his friendships, educational records, travel within the United States and possible contacts with extremists overseas."

That path should lead to Dammaj, a tribal area of Yemen, and a madrassa run by a Salafi cleric named Yahya Hajuri, a knowledgeable source told the IPT. Muhammad wanted to study at Hajuri's Al-Da'wah Center when he went to Yemen in early 2007.

The much-anticipated meeting between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu on May 18 went off smoothly, if a bit tensely, as predicted....

...based on an interview officers conducted with Muhammad, the suspect “probably had political and religious motives for the attack” on the recruiting center about 1.5 miles from his apartment.

“Mr. Muhammad, previously known as Mr. Bledsoe, did convert to Islam sometime previously in his life. At this point it appears that he specifically targeted military personnel, but there doesn’t appear to be a wider conspiracy or, at this point in time, any indication that he’s a part of a larger group or a conspiracy to go further,” the chief said. “At this point, we believe that it’s associated with his disagreement over the military operations.”

"...we now have a government that we cannot afford....

"I cannot support raising taxes because it would cause further hardship for families, businesses, and the overall economy.

"We have two options:  we can continue to tax and spend to pay for a government that we would like to have but can no longer afford, or we can take the steps necessary to create the government that we need and are able to afford.

"...delaying bills until July, instituting a statewide furlough plan, and scaling back free Medicaid benefits to low-income adults – will allow us to avoid deeper cuts in education, environmental protection, public safety, and other core services the State provides."

HONOLULU – Governor Linda Lingle and State School Superintendent Patricia Hamamoto today announced Hawai‘i’s participation in a nationwide program led by the states to ensure public school students have the knowledge and skills they need to compete in the global economy.

Governor Lingle and Superintendent Hamamoto have co-signed a Memorandum of Agreement that commits Hawai‘i to participate in the process of developing a common core of state standards that are internationally benchmarked.