In the years that followed a congressman's ascendancy to the chairmanship of a powerful committee, the average firm in his state cut back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent, according to their working paper, "Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?"

Hawaii's newly elected "DSA-er Democrat" Governor Neil "I am not a socialist" Abercrombie is the birthers' best friend -- and many commentators in Hawaii and across the nation are becoming increasingly annoyed by his antics. 

Location: Kalama Heights Retirement Home, Garden Room

Date: Friday, February 18th, 2011, 6:30pm

Cost: Free and open to the public!

This Sunday is President Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday.

The Obama-style politics and the youthful 2010 class of freshmen Republicans in the U.S. House might be a passing fad or it might become a lasting trend.  Hawaii has sent a congressional delegation that is betting the modern movement toward a much quicker internet dominated system of governing, based on transparency rather than pork, is temporary and our nation will eventually return to the 20th Century seniority centric system of quiet machine based power-dealing.  The American people will render the verdict on Hawaii’s bet in the next couple of years.

Senator Charles Schumer and other congressional leaders have called on government safety agencies to investigate why such elevated levels of lead are coming into contact with our food and leaching into the environment. Perhaps even more alarming, a University of Arizona study found fecal coliform bacteria and E. coli in some of the bags.

EPA standard for lead in packaging materials is 100ppm.  Safeway tests 6.72 times the EPA limit.  Walgreens is 2.98 times, KTA Superstores 2.85 times, and Defense Comissary Agency tests 2.35 times the EPA standard. 

When the U.S. Supreme Court asks for a response from the side that had won the case in the lower court, that is a sign that the Court is thinking that it might possibly take the case. The response from Hawaii is due March 2.

... 200 people who filled the ballroom at the Ala Moana hotel to hear congresswoman Michele Bachmann speak .... 

Certain violations of S. 52 would subject a person to up to five years in prison, a fine of $500,000, or both.

With this energy efficiency bonus however comes the problem of disposing of fluorescent and CFL bulbs in landfills. Enter 2 more bills – which put mandates on disposing the CFL bulbs by retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers. Senate Bill 197 mandates companies that sell the CFL bulbs submit a plan to the Legislature by 1/1/2012 on how to manage the waste. And then there’s House Bill 1527 that requires retailers and wholesalers to accept used light bulbs for recycling from customers.

SB602 proposes an amendment to the state constitution to legalize slot machines and video poker machines that are not visible from the street in designated resort areas within Waikiki.

Amends chapter 37, Hawaii Revised Statutes, to include agency-wide technology and computer systems with an estimated useful life of greater than seven years as capital investments to allow all costs to be financed with bond funds and depreciated as capital investments.

Physician Assisted Suicide Bill (SB 803)  Scheduled for Hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee

Monday, February 7, 2011 2:45 p.m. State Capitol - Auditorium (bottom level of the capitol)

Governor Neil Abercrombie today announced the appointment of State Representative Hermina Morita as the chair of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

Hopefully, every member of Congress will recognize by then that earmarks are a wasteful, unnecessary part of the budget process that should never be restored. CAGW will also be monitoring how members of Congress may attempt to circumvent the moratorium, through ‘phonemarking’ or other underhanded techniques.”

What would you call a health-insurance program that has worse health outcomes for cancer and heart disease than Medicare or private insurance, that pays doctors and specialists so little that they often refuse to see patients, and that’s driving state budgets into bankruptcy? If you’re the Obama administration, apparently, you call it a success and make it the cornerstone of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act....

Fontaine: “We heard from a Maui roofing contractor who said that if he received a $70K fine … he would have to earn $7M in additional business in order to make up the fine because his profit margin is so slim.”

"It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but ... the marriage that sustains your love." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1943

According to Heritage legal expert Robert Alt, Judge Vinson’s declaratory judgment binds the parties to the suit, which includes 26 states, the National Federation of Independent Business and the federal government. This means that, absent a court-issued stay, Obamacare cannot be further implemented as it pertains to these 26 states. So the White House now faces a simple choice: Will President Obama abide by a valid decision by a federal district court, or will he unilaterally ignore the rule of law? If the past is any indicator, the rule of law is in for a continued beating.

SB 232 SD1 Relating to Civil Unions is scheduled for hearing next week Tuesday. In addition to this bill, another civil union bill (HB 1453 Relating to Legal Relationships) will also be heard.

The US Senate voted 81-17 to repeal the Obamacare "1099-MISC" tax hike and information reporting requirement.  Hawaii Senators Dan Akaka and Dan Inouye were among a rump group of 17 Obamacare bitter-enders.

…others on retirement watch, including Sens. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.), offered no indication they will run again in 2012.

Akaka, 86, raised less than $2,000 in the fourth quarter and had just $66,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31....

Nor have I, or any of the other fishermen here, seen any long term decline in numbers of aquarium fish. We've been diving the same reefs for more than 4 decades, and the fish always return year after year. If this supposed depletion was true, we'd have been out of business long ago. The state has been monitoring the fishery since the early 1970s, and there has never been any declining trend.

Five years ago, Hawaii passed a law requiring that gasoline sold in the state must include 10 percent ethanol. The intent was “to provide energy independence from foreign oil, reduce statewide gasoline consumption, and establish industrial plants to produce ethanol locally.”

Fast forward to today and the intention of the law is shown to be a bust -- all of Hawaii’s ethanol comes from overseas and no ethanol plants have been built here. Because of this, Sen. Mike Gabbard has introduced a bill to repeal the 10 percent ethanol requirement for gasoline sold in Hawaii.

This will be Governor Abercrombie’s first appointment to the BOE.  In November 2010, Hawai‘i voters approved a Constitutional Amendment that gives the Governor the authority to appoint members of the BOE. The state Legislature is discussing legislation specifying the appointment process.

“It is my intention to replace Dr. Isa with a member who will continue serving on the Board of Education for the long term,” added Governor Abercrombie.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu responded to a question about the situation in Egypt, saying: "Certainly any disruption in the Middle East means a partial disruption in the oil we import. It’s a world market and [a disruption] could actually have real harm of the price. The best way America can protect itself against these incidents is to decrease our dependency on foreign oil, in fact to diversify our supply." This is a nice sentiment. Unfortunately, everything the Obama Administration is doing is only increasing our dependence on foreign sources of oil.

PRINCETON, NJ -- About 7 in 10 national adults, including 88% of Republicans, say it is important that Republican leaders in Congress take the Tea Party movement's positions and objectives into account as they address the nation's problems. Among Republicans, 53% rate this "very important."

Although the Flag Bill (HB1468) must eventually be heard – the Flag Bill will NOT be heard tomorrow.  This delay however gives all us who are passionate about displaying our flag on our own property more time to contact and urge Representative Cabanilla, Chairman of the House Committee on Housing, to put the flag bill – HB 1468—on the schedule for a hearing.

However, the bill that will be heard tomorrow, HB 1464, also deals with homeowner community associations and the lack of transparency by some homeowner community association boards in their decisions and actions and the lack of fairness by some of these boards in their treatment of their association members. 

“The President has stated unequivocally that he will veto any legislation containing earmarks, and the House will not pass any bills that contain them,” Inouye said in a statement. “Given the reality before us, it makes no sense to accept earmark requests that have no chance of being enacted into law.”

The move also comes after House and Senate Republicans have agreed not to seek earmarks for the two years of the 112th Congress.

It looks as though Sen. McConnell has determined a way to force Sen. Reid to allow a full repeal vote in the Senate today or tomorrow.

In detective novels and television crime dramas like "CSI," the nation's morgues are staffed by highly trained medical professionals equipped with the most sophisticated tools of 21st-century science. Operating at the nexus of medicine and criminal justice, these death detectives thoroughly investigate each and every suspicious fatality.

The reality, though, is far different. In a joint reporting effort, ProPublica, PBS "Frontline" and NPR spent a year looking at the nation's 2,300 coroner and medical examiner offices and found a deeply dysfunctional system that quite literally buries its mistakes.

And Knight laments that while the Hawaii Senate has bought into the "separation of church and state argument," it does not seem to have any trouble promoting Islam.

"In 2009, the Hawaii Senate chamber approved an Islam Day resolution, and it shows that there's a double standard here," the senior writer decides. "Something that celebrates or acknowledges Christianity, it's verboten. But when you celebrate Islam or anything else, then it's OK. That's multiculturalism; that means anything but Christianity."

"It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be ‘difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power’ and we would have a Constitution in name only."

The bill says that every qualified applicant “is required to authorize the attorney general to collect and transmit the necessary personal information required for registering the qualified applicant with the county clerk.”

 Along with Massachusetts and Connecticut, Hawaii leads the country with the highest ratio of bonded debt to personal income as well as having some of the highest long-term debt as a percentage of the state gross domestic product.

When are you just going to leave us alone to live our lives in peace?

Just because Maui and Kauai and San Francisco and other progressive enclaves have done it does not mean we have to be so foolish also.

"Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void."

It isn’t the first time around for Roger Dale Stockman, arrested in the parking lot of a Dearborn, Michigan mosque last week.  Stockman, allegedly caught with illegal fireworks after making threats against Arabs at a Dearborn bar, has a long criminal and psychiatric record.  At least two of his previous federal arrests involved threats.  In 1985 he was sent to a Federal Prison psychiatric ward after placing a pipe bomb in the Reno, NV airport.

Recent Congressional Votes

• Senate: Secret Holds Elimination
• House: Non-Security Discretionary Spending Limit
• House: Presidential Campaign Fund Termination

This bill, HB 1468, brings Hawaii into compliance with the federal law as well as ensuring that these home owners may display their American Flag continuously 365 days a year despite any association board's regulation, covenant, or similar binding agreement to the contrary.  It also removes any fee you would have to pay to display our Flag.  HB1468 IS BEING HEARD WED FEB 2, 8:30AM IN CONFERENCE ROOM 325 AT THE CAPITOL.

The most important message is what it doesn't tell us. It doesn't tell us whether the person who died consented when the lethal dose was administered.

Further to that, the physician is rarely present at the time the lethal dose is administered. If the person does not consent, who would know?

The reporting system has a conflict of interest, whereby the physician who wrote the lethal prescription submits the report. The physician will not admit to abuse.

The Senate Committee on Agriculture, chaired by Senator Clarence Nishihara and Vice Chair Gil Kahele, will hear SB 711 relating to genetically engineered fish at a hearing immediately following the joint hearing with the Committee on Energy and Environment which is hearing the other two anti-biotech bills.

Four assisted suicide bills have been introduced in the State House and Senate.  None of them have yet been scheduled for committee hearings.  The bills can be tracked here ....

Oahu:  Wednesday, Feb. 2nd, 11:30 am to 1 pm

Maui: Wednesday, February 2nd, 5:30 to 8pm

Adding to its developing reputation for secrecy, the Abercrombie Administration has now clearly lied about at least one aspect of the sudden withdrawal of Dr Neal Palafox’s DoH nomination.

The bill will now crossover from the Senate to the House.  We are anticipating the bill will be heard in the House Judiciary committee and will let you know once the hearing is scheduled.