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Monday, November 4, 2013
November 4, 2013 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 4:37 PM :: 3626 Views

In Push to Close Hearings Hawaii Legislature Changes Testimony Procedures

Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted November 4, 2013

Animal Farm: George Orwell Looks at Gay Marriage

HawaiiRemembers.com -- Sign Up to be Reminded How Your Sen. and Rep. Voted on Gay Marriage

Forcing Gay Marriage on Churches is Second Overthrow of Hawaiian Kingdom

Bart Dame: ...in “the real world” of the church pews and the Capitol auditorium, native Hawaiians are turning out en masse and repeating that framework:

“Gay equality is a Western, European idea and the gay advocates are haole outsiders, who come here acting like ‘know-it-alls’ with NO sensitivity to local people and our culture. This is a Second overthrow of Hawaiian culture by arrogant outsiders.”

That is a composite of the argument. But it has great force on the imagination of many, many people of Hawaiian ancestry.

I know I will anger some of my allies, but too many gay rights advocates feed into that stereotype.

As Explained: Opposition to Gay Marriage from Native Hawaiians Boosts Push for Religious Freedom 

read ...  Second Overthrow

NYT to Hawaiians: We Tell You What Your Culture is

NYT: To allow a full airing of views, the Legislature said any citizen could comment. In what some called a “public filibuster,” religious opponents mobilized, accounting for most of the more than 1,000 people who testified for two minutes each, during 55 hours of hearings over five days this week.

Both sides claimed to represent the true “aloha spirit.” Some ethnic Hawaiians tearfully said the bill would destroy their culture, and the opponents’ television and radio ads described as endangered the Hawaiian heritage of “ohana,” or family, of “mothers and fathers caring for each other and their keiki,” or children.

But ethnic historians noted that the pre-European island culture did not have marriage in the modern sense and accepted homosexuality.  (And even though we at the NYT have never heard of Queen Kaahumanu, we are here to tell you that all of your history from Kaahumanu on doesn't count.)  

read ... NYT Proving Bart Dame Right

Machado Expected to Make Full Recovery

SA: Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chairwoman Colette Machado is expected to make a full recovery after suffering a stroke Friday night.

"Mahalo to everyone for their thoughts and prayers," Machado said in an OHA news release this evening, adding, "I feel great."

Machado expressed gratitude to her family and friends, who helped her and called 911 immediately, and for the prayers from her church family....

Dr. Cherylee Chang, director of the Stroke Center and Neuroscience Institute at the Queen's Medical Center, said Machado could be released from the hospital as early as Tuesday.

read ... Full Recovery

Lawsuit Exposes Conditions at HHSC Hospitals

KGI: Seven months after the accident, Efhan came back to Kauai and was admitted to Mahelona Hospital, where he would spend nearly seven years in a room with three other people.

At Mahelona, he said he fought two battles; one to improve his health and regain independence, and another to receive proper and decent care from a hospital that advertises “programs and facilities such as exercise, spa treatments, nutrition, massage and other complementary therapies, assisted living and more.”

The hospital is under-funded, under-staffed and under-equipped, Efhan said....

Efhan said Mahelona lacks full-time professional care, mental patients constantly wander into long-term care wards and steal personal items, buildings have asbestos and are infested with termites and rain water comes in through holes in the roof and cracks on walls.

“Nothing ever gets resolved, I have hundreds of complaints,” he said of the grievances he’s filed with the hospital but not with the court, ranging from shortage of linens, over medication, to poor quality of food, to being given old gowns with stains or holes in them. “They keep having the same problems over and over.”

Residents are bundled in herds so it’s easier to take care of them, Efhan said. Certified nurse assistants take care of eight to 12 patients at a time, and sometimes as many as 16 patients, he said.

As Explained: Hawaii Hospitals: Not Quite Catching Up To Africa

read ... HHSC Reality

Star-Adv: Abercrombie Should Impose Kauai Anti-GMO Bill Statewide

SA: Carvalho's veto rightly highlights that fact, and should add new urgency to the effort to craft statewide standards that require large enterprises to disclose pesticide use in a format easily accessible to, and understood by, the general public.

While a county's authority to enact and enforce such requirements may be cloudy, the state's authority to regulate pesticides is clear.

Given Carvalho's veto, and his doubts about whether this county bill will withstand legal challenge if overridden, the state should exercise its power and make the best elements of the Kauai bill mandatory throughout Hawaii.

read ... Public deserves more disclosure of pesticide use

Micromanagement Blamed as Castagnetti Suddenly Quits Punchbowl Post

SA: ...Castagnetti retired suddenly and quietly, effective Sept. 30, after nearly 24 years at the helm of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

The retired Marine colonel and decorated Vietnam combat veteran said he could no longer stomach what he characterized as "micromanagement" from the Veterans Affairs regional office in California and a new director of field operations in Washington, D.C.

That micromanagement extended to political decisions regarding burial spots at the cemetery, Castagnetti said.

"I think I would have (otherwise) stayed longer, because I'm in good health and I could still contribute and be an advocate for veterans," the 75-year-old Kailua resident said.

read ... Micromanagement

Hawaii DOT 'Never Got Around' To Telling Matson Its Pipe Was Still Leaking

CB: ...at noon, an employee of Horizon Lines shipping company thought the air smelled of molasses. The worker notified the Department of Transportation — the state agency in charge of the harbor.

Nearly three hours later, Bob Lamb of Matson Navigation Co. contacted Harbor Operations Supervisor Alan Murakami to say there’d been a spill. Matson is the only company that ships molasses out of Honolulu Harbor.

Murakami immediately emailed Randal Leong, an environmental engineer in the DOT Harbor Division, to tell him what he’d just learned. But Leong wasn't surprised.

“We informed Bob that the line had a slow leak some time ago,” Leong said in an email back to Murakami. “Apparently they never addressed the leak.”

The fact that both the state and Matson had known about a leaking molasses pipeline for more than a year would quickly become a public embarrassment for the DOT. It turned out the state knew the leak had never been fixed shortly after the spill was reported, but lied to the media and lawmakers about it.

DOT officials later said they misled the public because they weren't sure what they were legally allowed to say. Still, the misstep has worked to undermine the credibility of the very state agency that is supposed to oversee shipping. It's also called into question the capabilities of Matson, one of the oldest shipping lines in the state, to conduct a safe operation

read ... Abercrombie Administration at Fault

PV installation needs electricians, union says

SA: A union representing electricians in Hawaii is asking state regulators to require that a licensed electrician be involved in all phases of the installation of solar photovoltaic systems.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1186 maintains that the installation of PV panels meets the definition of "electrical work" under state law, and therefore requires a one-to-one ratio of licensed electricians to nonlicensed electrical workers on a job site to ensure that PV systems are properly grounded.

Officials from the Hawaii Solar Energy Association, however, say the PV installation process has evolved to the point where much of the preliminary racking and placing of the panels can be done safely by other workers, with a licensed electrician doing the final wiring. Having a licensed electrician involved in every step of the process would increase the cost of PV systems and result in a shortage of electricians for other types projects, the association said.

The solar industry trade group laid out its concerns during an Oct. 7 meeting of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs' Board of Electricians and Plumbers. The board will take up the issue again at a meeting Tuesday.

Oct 24, 2013: Electricians Grab for Solar Work?

NOTE: IBEW Represents HECO hourly workers at plants which might be shut down or cut back if alt-energy replaces them.

read ... Going to get more expensive

The $10 Billion Question: How Much Does D.C. Really Give Hawaii?

CB: After nearly 30 years, the U.S. Census Bureau stopped publishing the Consolidated Federal Funds Report, a document that detailed how much federal money flows into states and helped contextualize changes in spending.

Fortunately, this kind of spending is being tracked on a new website, USASpending.gov.

There's just one problem: the new statistics don't match up with the old data.  Not even close.

Whereas the consolidated funds report said Hawaii received $20.9 billion from the feds in 2010, USASpending.gov says the state got just $10.2 billion that year.

CB: Hawaii's Federal Take? More Than $20 Billion

read ... How Much?

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