Ethics

The vote postponement follows some written criticisms of the bill by prominent members of the Native Hawaiian legal community.

In a four-page analysis of the legislation sent to the Natural Resources Committee, the Native Hawaiian Bar Association voiced concern that some provisions would grant the federal government too much immunity against potential claims by Native Hawaiians, especially for land.

(They want the Akaka Tribe but they are unwilling to trade away the PASH decision and the opportunity to shake down future Hokulias.)

House minority staff report that the Akaka Bill, HR2314 Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, is scheduled to be "marked up" by the US House Committee on Natural Resources Thursday, July 9th at 10AM. 

UPDATE 4PM 7-8-09: House Minority press secretary Jill Strait reports that the Akaka Bill has been removed from the agenda for tomorrow's meeting of the US House Committee on Natural Resources.   

Celebrating his first 100 days in office, President Barack Obama told the American people: “One hundred days ago, in the midst of the worst economic crisis in half a century, we passed the most sweeping economic recovery act in history…One hundred days later, we are already seeing results.”

And he’s right, we are. Unemployment has risen to 9.5%, stocks fell to their lowest level in 10 weeks on Tuesday, and consumer credit delinquencies have hit a record high.

Responding to the obvious failure of the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus package, some liberals in the House and Senate are calling for a second (really the third when you count President Bush’s 2008 effort) stimulus. How big of a second stimulus? Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Dean Baker told Politico: “To my mind it’s pretty obvious we need another stimulus package, probably a lot bigger than the last one.”

In response to the state’s financial woes, Djou has advocated curtailing expenditures by shrinking the state budget and scaling back government programs. He has been a vocal critic of Hannemann’s proposal of a 20-mile elevated rail line that would run throughout Honolulu. Hannemann has said the jobs needed to construct the rail system would stimulate the economy, while Djou has charged that the cost would outstrip the job-related benefits.

“Charles is trying to make it understood that you can’t solve all your problems by raising taxes,” said Jim Bryan, a spokesman for the Hawaii Republican Party. “It’s going to hurt people further who have already suffered from this economy.”

Richard Ianieri, the defense contractor charged today with accepting $200,000 in kickbacks from a subcontractor, was president of a company that gave more money to Rep. John Murtha than any other lawmaker. That company, Coherent Systems International, received millions of dollars in earmarks from Murtha, and continued giving money to the Pennsylvania Democrat after Ianieri left Coherent and Argon ST bought it.

This past Friday the CBO released a fuller scoring of HELP’s legislation, and indeed, the overall impact on our nation’s debt is lower: a mere $597 billion would be added to federal budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period.

How did HELP lower the bill’s budget busting total? Did they “bend the curve” on health care costs? Did they weed out administrative costs? Eliminate waste? Nope. The Washington Post reports:

Committee staffers reworked the bill — and added a new provision requiring most employers to contribute to the cost of health insurance — to arrive at the lower estimate. Under the new proposal, any business with more than 25 workers would be required to offer coverage or pay a $750 penalty per employee.

In other words, the HELP committee wants to pay for their health care plan in classic “tax-and-spend” liberal fashion: by instituting a crippling new tax on our nation’s businesses. And not just any new tax. A tax directed like a heat seeking missile at job creation: an employer mandate.

"This is a reckless fiscal maneuver that dramatically increases taxpayers' cost and an inappropriate use of the defense budget to spread political pork.  This is nothing more than an all too typical Congressional move to spend public money for the sake of spending money," stated Djou.  "This is exactly the reason why Hawaii needs a new voice in D.C."

The NY Times fails to mention that Eid al-Adha falls on Sunday, September 11 in the year 2016 and Eid al-Fitr will begin at sunset on September 9 and continue to sunset on Friday September 10 in the year 2010.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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

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.

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.

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. Everyone was on best behavior and the event excited so little attention that the New York Times reported it on page 12.

As expected, however, the gloves came off immediately thereafter, with a series of tough American demands, especially U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's insistence on May 27 that the Netanyahu government end residential building for Israelis in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. This prompted a defiant response. The Israeli governing coalition chairman pointed out the mistake of prior "American dictates," a minister compared Obama to pharaoh, and the government press office director cheekily mock-admired "the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem."

  MUGSHOT: Criminal who founded Air America Evan Montvel-Cohen

Evan Montvel-Cohen, a Guam media executive who co-founded the liberal national radio network Air America, pleaded no contest in Circuit Court yesterday to a charge of first-degree theft....His no-contest plea was part of a bargain with prosecutors who agreed to dismiss other charges of credit card fraud, forgery, money laundering and second-degree theft.....

(THIS WILL BE THE ONLY TIME COHEN HAS FACED JUSTICE FOR ANY PART OF HIS ALLEGED MULTI-STATE, MULTI-YEAR CRIME SPREE....)

Speaking to a celebrity studded fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in Beverly Hills last night, President Barack Obama humbly proclaimed he “would put these first four months up against any prior administration since FDR.”....

Near the end of his Beverly Hills remarks to the Hollywood elite, Obama promised, “Los Angeles, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Unfortunately President Obama may be right again. His upcoming agenda includes a trillion dollar energy tax, the stealth nationalization of the health care industry, and an economy killing rewrite of our nation’s labor laws.

Canadian Shona Holmes had a brain tumor and was told by her government health care agency to wait 6 months for treatment.  In Canada she had no choice.  The government had spoken.  So Shona mortgaged her home and came to the United States for immediate treatment--that saved her life.

(HERE ARE THE REASONS OBAMA PICKED SOTOMAYOR)

In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.”

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

She added, “And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

She also approvingly quoted several law professors who said that “to judge is an exercise of power” and that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.”

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” she said.

(WHO NEEDS LAWS OR A CONSTITUTION WHEN ONE CAN FACE JUDGEMENT BASED ON THE JUDGE'S INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY?)

At the Chinese border city of Yanji, 130 miles (200 kilometers) northwest from the test site, an emergency siren sounded shortly before 9 a.m. when officials thought an earthquake occurred. A receptionist at Yanji's International Hotel said she and several hotel guests felt the ground tremble.

Aziz Poonawalla of Madison, Wisconsin May 19 writes: “Naturally, there are some (conservative, Republican) people who see this as dhimmitude incarnate. This fellow for example ... intones seriously, 'the muslims are laughing'. Why, yes, we are indeed.”

The first commenter on Poonawalla’s blog post identifies himself as Hawaii IIO webmaster Abdul Rashid Abdullah.  The Islamic Information Office (IIO) website is tied to the Hawaii-based Muslim initiators of the “Islam Day” resolution. 

The next morning “Indira” comments: “Nice work, that is also September 11 on the Julian calendar, no wonder you are laughing at kufr.” 

Americans woke up Thursday morning to hear the news about four radical Muslims who plotted to bomb two synagogues in New York and shoot down a military plane using a Stinger missile. Fortunately, the FBI had infiltrated the plotters from the very beginning with a confidential informant who learned of the plan from an Afghan-born Muslim. ...(but) protests and press conferences have been held by "mainstream" Islamic groups in California, Detroit, Chicago, and elsewhere during the past few months bitterly protesting the FBI's use of an informant in a California mosque. In that case, an FBI agent testified under oath that Ahmadullah Niazi had been trying to recruit jihadists and had disseminated al Qaeda and virulent and violent anti-American recordings. He allegedly exhorted the informant to carry out jihad, praised Osama bin Laden as an angel, and even promised to send the informant overseas to get terrorist training to carry out attacks here in the United States.

From the Wall Street Journal.  In dueling speeches Thursday morning, President Barack Obama sought to reassure lawmakers and the public about his national-security decisions, while former Vice President Dick Cheney defended Bush-era policies.  Here is a point-counterpoint, compiled by the Journal’s Jonathan Weisman:

More recently still, CAIR has demanded that Florida House Majority Leader Adam Hasner step down, for the "crime" of co-hosting a conference on free speech at which Mr.Wilders spoke. Lawsuits charging "defamation" continue to plague people who speak out against radical Islam and terrorism, including ongoing cases against Iranian-American researcher Hassan Daioleslam, Americans Against Hate founder Joseph Kaufman, and Hawaii Free Press Editor Andrew Walden. By and large, these events, and others like them, have not made the front page of any major newspaper, or been featured on broadcast television, if mentioned at all.

The caucuses replace Hawaii Republicans' former convention-based system of voting for Presidential-year RNC delegates. Backers of the caucus system pointed to the opportunity to recruit thousands of new Republicans as the competing Republican Presidential nominees campaign in Hawaii and encourage their supporters to vote at the caucuses.  The Hawaii Republican caucus will be held on the third Tuesday in February.

(Today's Star-Bulletin Editorial properly Fisked by your beloved Editor) 

Legislators' near-unanimous approval of a resolution creating an Islam Day in Hawaii was greeted with anger by many people who mistook it as siding with terrorists.  (Why would they think that?  Just because it honors Sept 11 in the old Julian calendar but corresponds with exactly nothing in the Islamic calendar?  Or is it because of the 'magnificent' 7% below....)

In response to the www.HawaiiFreePress.com article “Hawaii ‘Islam Day’ secretly marks September 11” UH Manoa Department of Religion professor James D. Frankel today writes:

“Andrew Walden has uncovered no secret or nefarious conspiracy to honor the deplorable terrorism of September 11, 2001. The 12th day of Rabi ul-Awwal will fall on September 24, 2009, but will be on September 13 next year and September 2 the year after that.”

Frankel is dead wrong -- and has exposed an utterly stupendous ignorance of his own field of study.

Had Professor Frankel bothered to look at an Islamic calendar he would have discovered that the Islamic lunar calendar’s “12th day of Rabi ul-Awwal” fell on March 9, 2009 and will next year fall on February 26, 2010.

"States that adopt new taxes on high-income earners are ones where policymakers are persuaded to ignore concerns about long-term economic growth in favor of a short-term budget fix that avoids deep spending cuts."

The word "al-Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury." A one-word translation would be "Dissimulation."

I was one of those Ron Paul supporters employed in Rep. Pine’s office.  Your comment implies that I am in favor of government getting involved with religion.  I do not.  I believe government should have no place in supporting any religion.  On the other hand I do not support government officials equating Islam with terrorism.  Equating Islam with terrorism shows the ignorance of some people who refuse to take off their blinders. 

HCR 100, the Islamic Holiday Resolution passed by the State Senate (22-3) on Thursday, May 7, is insensitive to patriotic Americans of all religions, outrageous, and an embarrassment (once again) for the State of Hawaii.

This resolution (which does not have the force of law) proclaims September 24 as Islam Day in Hawaii. How insensitive, no matter what the original intent, can anyone get, selecting a holiday just 13 days following the 911 Islamic terrorist attack on America? Is it just me that feels the stunning inappropriateness here?

From email distributed by the Islamic Information Office of Hawaii:

Islam day HCR100 Resolution was on the agenda yesterday (Wednesday). Senator Hemmings (Republican) gave a hate speech in opposition talking about the 10% of Islamic terrorists who want to kill Americans. The gallery was filled with the red shirts that are opposing HB444, the Civil Unions bill who all stood and applauded in support of Senator Hemmings speech against this Resolution. It was disgusting.

Hawaii has no Christianity Day, no Judaism Day, and no Buddhism Day--but Hawaii's Democrat Legislators have decided to violate the "establishment clause" of US Constitution -- for Islam. 

Affirming that their desire to submit to Islam supercedes their adherence to the sacred principles of the US Constitution, by a 22-3 vote the Hawaii Senate approved House Concurrent Resolution 100 which designates September 24, 2009 as Islam Day.  The State House had earlier approved the measure.

The recruitment push is unavoidably part of the GOP quest for identity and leadership. President Obama, an untraditional candidate from an untraditional background, helped Democrats define themselves and win over followers during the end of the Bush years. Now Republicans are looking in out-of-the-ordinary places for candidates who can enthuse Americans and pick up seats in their name....