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Tuesday, October 13, 2015
October 13, 2015 News Read
By Andrew Walden @ 7:40 PM :: 3283 Views

'God bless the military' sign to stay at Marine base in Hawaii

City Returning to Kakaako to Remove 'Tremendous Volume of Trash'

American President Challenges Matson's Guam Monopoly

Victory for Local Food: Hawaii’s $100M Longline Fishery Reopens

Moody's -- Hawaii outlook positive

Gallup: Hawaii Leads U.S. in Financial Well-Being

Hawaii Congressional Delegation How They Voted October 13, 2015

Why GMO?

IT Upgrades Could Save Hawaii $101M -- Report

Fortunately for Maui, Tsutsui was Kept out of Hospital Discussions

SA: Particularly distressing, the ranks of those left out of the loop seems to include his own second in command. Lt. Gov. Shan Tsutsui told Honolulu Star-Advertiser writer Sophie Cocke that he has been sidelined in the Ige administration, not involved in nearly as many strategic meetings as he had been under former Gov. Neil Abercrombie.

Tsutsui, like Brian Schatz before him, had been given assignments fitting for a member of the executive team. Since the upset victory that put Ige in charge, all that has changed. The former Maui legislator wasn’t even informed about the status of the negotiations over the privatization of the public hospitals and clinics on his home island, just to cite one example. 

REALITY: Since Tsutsui is flacking for HGEA/UPW obviously he should be kept as far away from the Maui Hospital negotiations as possible.  Perhaps a three-month trade mission to Mongolia?

Granted, the lieutenant governor’s principal mission is as a backup should something happen to the governor. But there’s little hope he could fulfill that role if he’s kept in the dark about what’s going on across the way on the Capitol’s fifth floor. And the taxpayer surely hopes that the No. 2 office-holder delivers substantive work in return for his or her salary.

Big Q-- 53% 'Not Well' -- How well, and openly, do you think Gov. David Ige is running the state?

What this is About: Tsutsui: Ige Should Consider Halting Maui Hospital Negotiations

read ... Ige should lead through openness

Espero: Chief Should Step Aside until FBI Finishes with Him

HNN: State Senate Vice President Will Espero said HPD Chief Louis Kealoha should step aside from his leadership role until the FBI completes its criminal investigation over allegations that he abused his power.

The chief's wife – a top deputy city prosecutor -- is also under federal investigation. But her boss told Hawaii News now she will not be put on leave.

Police officers are routinely placed on paid leave -- reassigned to desk jobs with their badges and guns temporarily removed -- if they're accused of ethical or criminal wrongdoing.

But that hasn't happened to the police chief in spite of a city ethics investigation targeting him and his wife that’s more than six months old.  The couple is also under scrutiny in a widening federal criminal investigation, sources said.

Kealoha and his wife Katherine are the targets of the federal civil rights probe. The case began after a federal defense attorney accused them of framing her uncle in the theft of a mailbox from their home, and accused police officers of falsifying records and making evidence disappear.

read ... Step Aside

Morita: Hawaii Energy Policy Driven by Birthers

MM: The vast majority who oppose the HECO/NextEra merger application are not much interested in an electrical system to serve all customers but rather for the fringe who believe a municipal or cooperative electric utility will give the customer everything they desire; who believe 100% renewables can happen in the near future but don't want it in their backyard; who don't want LNG because of fracking but expect electricity costs to go down; who believe solar and storage are the panacea and the democratization of power generation is the answer to all our woes they fight to retain subsidies and with the benefits going to the same people leaving many others behind and paying for it.

This fiasco (the barrage of opinions and distractions) might be good entertainment if not for the simple fact that affordable and reliable electricity is the lifeblood of a robust economy and quality of life.

IM: Mina Morita: Standing Against a Tidal Wave

CB: Hawaii's NextEra Deal Is Turning Into A Political Circus

read ... Birthers

Choy: UH Needs to Be Downsized

Borreca: Despite the wayward ways of UH basketball and the disappointing football team, the real focus is on the faulty money pit that is the Cancer Center.

State Rep. Isaac Choy, the Manoa Democrat who had headed the House Higher Education Committee for the past four years, said few understand that the Cancer Center neither treats cancer nor is running its own programs.

“We are setting up a research center; we are not funding research. We are funding the research capability. After we put out the money, UH still has to get research grants. The money doesn’t go for research, just the chance to go get them. People think we are treating cancer; that’s not true,” said Choy.

Earlier this month, a UH regents subcommittee failed to to agree on how much to ask the Legislature to give the Cancer Center. In a rarely seen tie vote, the regents put off making a decision until this week. Also questioned was funding for sports.

The Cancer Center spend- ing plan is dubious. Already it is costing between $7.5 million to $9.5 million more than it takes in and is burning through its reserves....

Some regents said the UH should wait for a consultant report to tell the regents what to do about the cancer center and put in a token $1 appropriation as a place-holder, while others said just fund it and deal with the program later. End result? No decision until this week.

“Athletics should be a budget line item; I don’t think athletics will ever break even,” Choy said in an interview.

The Cancer Center, however, does not face as certain a future in Choy’s mind.

“The Cancer Center just shows the dysfunction of UH,” he said.

If he were mapping out UH’s future, Choy said, he would focus the Manoa campus as a major, nationally ranked research campus, while the West Oahu and Hilo campuses would focus on teaching college students.

“The community colleges do so much remedial work they could become an adjunct of the state Department of Education,” Choy said, adding that he envisions the community colleges involved in workforce development.

The Choy plan would be bad news for UH empire builders. UH “needs to be right-sized,” Choy said, and in his mind, that means “we need to make the university smaller.”

read ... Empire Builders

Hawaii DoE Among Top States Suing Parents of SPED Kids

DS: Special education disputes are far more likely to be litigated in some states than others, with a new report finding that just 10 states account for nearly two thirds of all court decisions.

Between 1979 and 2013, there were over 5,000 court decisions nationwide related to legal questions under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, according to an analysis published recently in the Journal of Special Education Leadership.

Nearly 600 of those decisions came out of New York, while Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. each accounted for about 500 decisions.

Rounding out the top 10 states on the list are California, Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Texas, Connecticut and Virginia, the study found.

Meanwhile, the states at the bottom of the list — North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Montana — saw less than 10 court decisions apiece related to IDEA over more than three decades.

read ... Litigation

Project Immediately Halted Because Group of Usual Suspects oppose geothermal survey on Hualalai

HTH: A group that has long fought geothermal development in Puna plans to challenge a geothermal survey on Hualalai for lacking an environmental assessment.

Terri Napeahi, Pele Defense Fund vice president, thinks the state erred by not requiring the review for the exploration project, which will measure very low-frequency electromagnetic waves underground, and plans to file a lawsuit.

That move follows the state Board of Land and Natural Resources’ decision Friday to deny her request for a contested case hearing.

Napeahi, a follower of Native Hawaiian religious practices, said she sees geothermal development as an insult to the goddess Pele.... (Unless OHA gets a cut, then its OK.)

Donald Thomas, director of The Center for the Study of Active Volcanoes at University of Hawaii at Hilo, said an archaeological survey already occurred on the 19 parcels used for the survey. He said nothing was found.

Thomas, who is leading the geothermal exploration project, said it will have a low impact and estimated 1 square meter of land will be disturbed for every million square meters surveyed. He said he will keep the project on hold until a legal challenge is resolved....

What This is All About: OHA's Ceded Lands Cashflow

read ... Geothermal

Sam Slom on Making the GOP Relevant in Hawaii

CB: The state’s only Republican senator jokes about how he can “caucus with myself,” but he has serious views on making the GOP relevant here....

read ... Relevant

Everybody Wants to talk About Trump

CB: Former Hawaii GOP executive director Dylan Nonaka says everyone he runs across in Kona, where he now lives, wants to talk about Trump, “even my Democrat friends from high school.”

Nonaka says it’s just talk about Trump, not serious voter interest.

“I keep thinking Trump will go away at some point, but he doesn’t. He talks like people wish all politicians would talk. Trump is a very interesting phenomenon,” says Nonaka.

Bill Clinton summed up this Trump fascination in much the same way in an interview with Stephen Colbert on the “The Late Show.”

Clinton says Trump is popular “because he is a master brander and he is the most interesting character out there and because he says something that overrides ideological differences.”

“There is a macho appeal to saying, ‘I am sick of nothing happening. I am going to make something happen. Vote for me.’” ....

read ... Trump

Cane Burning Study Co-Authored by Chemtrails Activist

CB: The burning of large sugar cane fields on Maui has been linked to acute respiratory distress in a new study by health professionals.

The study was the first of its kind to separate symptoms caused by cane burning from vog, said (chemtrails activist) Dr. Lorrin Pang of the Maui Department of Health, a co-author.

Best Comment: "IS THIS A JOKE????"

read ... The Usual Suspects

Kauai Paper Finally Gets Around to Visiting a Seed Farm

KE: After years of printing — without question — every bit of inflammatory bullshit that Kauai Councilman Gary Hooser and the anti-GMO activists fed it, The Garden Island finally sent a reporter out to one of the biotech farms.

And guess what? She discovered the fields aren't the dead, toxic wasteland that anti-GMO activists have portrayed.

Sadly, these revelations are a little late....

WHT: Anti-GMO Crowd Still Scrounging for Emails

read ... Musings: Down on the Farm

Hawaii County prosecutor to dismiss 20 cases involving Mauna Kea arrests

KHON: The decision comes after Circuit Court Judge Ronald Ibarra invalidated emergency rules set up by the state prohibiting people from being on the mountain overnight....

Cases unrelated to the judge’s ruling will continue.

read ... Dismissed

Drug Addicts Camped Along Ala Wai Canal Refuse Shelter

HNN: Officials from the Institute for Human Services said they've gotten several inquiries over the last month about homeless moving in near the Ala Wai Golf Course.

About 1 p.m. Monday, Hawaii News Now cameras captured homeless people sleeping on benches as well as in the grass outside the Kapahulu-Waikiki library.

A woman was pitching tents next to the Ala Wai golf course, and people were camped out on the opposite end of the canal near McCully in the Ala Wai Dog Park.

IHS spokesman Kimo Carvalho said an IHS outreach team reached out to about 15 homeless people camped along Ala Wai Canal on Monday. Most were single males.

“Most of them were clearly substance abuse users,” Carvalho said, adding that none of the homeless took IHS up on an offer of additional services.

Carvalho added that as of Monday, there were 72 openings at the IHS men’s shelter.

read ... Advocates report increase of homeless in Waikiki

City Proposes Waianae Housing for 75 Homeless

SA: The city said last month it would purchase a 1.1-acre property near Waianae High School and next to Maluhia Lutheran Church on Farrington Highway as a site to house the area’s homeless. The project calls for 16 to 20 modular units — about 480 square feet each with two bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen — that would accommodate 75 to 90 people and cost about $2.3 million. The site would also include a parking lot, common room and program office.

Among concerns aired last week before the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board was that the area would become a draw for the rest of Oahu’s homeless population.

“We know the problem. There are so many other places to put this project,” said Candy Suiso, co-founder of Searider Productions, an elective program focused on media production at Waianae HighSchool. “Another one (housing project) in our community is not going to solve the problem.”

City officials have maintained that they are committed to housing the homeless in the communities they live in.

read ... Go West Young Bum

New Civil Beat Editor: I Just Got Here and I want to Help Keep the Homeless on the Streets

CB: How can city, county and state officials on Oahu so severely misjudge ways to address the challenge of homelessness? It baffles me to see political leaders razing homeless encampments — and then confiscating impoverished people’s belongings and making them wrestle with red tape and high costs to get anything back.

Honolulu’s “sit-lie” law, which bans sitting or lying on sidewalks or public thoroughfares, seems both mean-spirited and unproductive. At heart, it is a way of telling homeless people: Stay out of sight, so we don’t have to be confronted by the fact we don’t give a damn about you.

These kinds of sweeps and policies of immiseration are common in banana republics. Is that really what Hawaii aspires to?

Reality: Immiseration comes from leaving the homeless on the streets--a policy relentlessly pushed by billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his website.  Their condition can only be improved by FORCING them to accept shelter.  As shown by Ortega's 'Stay out of sight, so we don’t have to be confronted' line, the homeless are being kept homeless as a cultural statement.  The so-called 'progressives' behind this policy are the ones who 'don't give a damn' about the people who suffer on the street.  Ortega apparently wants to keep the homeless homeless to confront you and make you conform to his ideology. 

read ... Bob Ortega just got here from Arizona

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