Over 250 Puna residents joined Fred Blas for a Maku`u Farmers Market June 21 kickoff rally launching his campaign for Puna’s House District 4 seat as a Republican.

Kona CDP ‘Picayune’--Council gets garbage right--Throw the bums out!--Waiawi: Bananas safe--Imagine the Vog--No-Drill Network  

Instead of cutting bureaucracy, Senators Lorraine Inouye and Roz Baker have a different solution—close down rural schools and sell them to developers. 

Kohala is one of the few Big Island schools not deemed ‘failing’ under “No Child Left Behind” standards.  Under formulas used by the Board of Education under Act 51, successful schools are often punished by budget cuts. Kohala HS will be losing $500,000 in funding for the 2009-10 school year.

Hawai`i’s lack of progress is not due to a lack of planning, but rather to, more than anything else, an excess.  Block anything that’s not in the plan.  So here comes even more rigid planning to lock in an imaginary future...

The Hawai`i Island Journal is closed.  Its last edition, published June 14, carried only a short notice of regret ...

Hawai`i Free Press assists four Big Island mayoral candidates with some suggestions for new campaign slogans:

Tougher laws against people who use the Internet to commit sexual acts against minors.

Akaka Reservation for Corporations--Special rights for terrorists--Tossed from graduation--Raining on the poor--Suing for Smoking--Bush Lincoln--Hawaiians recognized in US Constitution

Citizen--“But officer, officer, this is for my glaucoma.  I have a prescription!”
Officer—“Just because you put a few stems and seeds in there doesn’t make it legal.  I’d know the smell of tobacco anywhere.  Let’s go!  I’m taking you in.”

Councilmember and Mayoral candidate Angel Pilago has found a cause great enough to risk his candidacy - dope.  With Pilago joined by Brenda Ford, Emily Naeole, and Dominic Yagong, the County Council voted 4-4 not to accept $441,000 in federal funds offered to the Hawaii County police for “Green Harvest” marijuana eradication work.

Knife wielding goons demanded money from campers.  Public workers sleep through their shift.  Pavilions are filthy and littered with broken glass.

Leading Hawai‘i County “clean elections” advocates are caught up in a web of campaign spending violations and campaign-related conflict-of-interest charges.

Governor Linda Lingle seeks your input on veto decisions.

In a Feb­ru­ary 28, 2008 letter, Hon­orary Vice-Consul of Italy in Hawaii, Car­men Di Amore-Siah, purports to grant the Hawaii King­dom Gov­ern­ment group recognition by the Gov­ern­ment of Italy.

Molokai’s largest private employer is closing operations. With unemployment already at 7 percent, 120 more Molokai residents (on an island of just over 7,000 residents) are losing their jobs. In a state where politicians pretend to be obsessed with “saving agriculture,” cattle ranching will end on the 1/3 of the island owned by Molokai Ranch.

Convicted felons are being registered. Some jurisdictions propose allowing non-citizens to cast ballots in state and local elections. But are our soldiers voting?

...“Sovereignty is already happening now. We are educating our children.  What we have in front of us doesn’t work.”....

After nationalizing a Kauai poi factory in December, the state of Hawaii is considering collectivized agriculture. A bill before the Legislature’s House Committee on Health would establish a state farm on Maui -- to grow marijuana.

Red hot lava threatening Puna’s Royal Gardens subdivision opens yet another chapter in a long-running saga. A hui of elected officials and state and county engineers in 1961 bought the 1,807 acre site from the Bishop Estate (Kamehameha Schools) for $200,000 after easily obtaining preliminary approval to subdivide from the Hawaii County Planning Commission.

Earlier this year, OHA officials, led by Trustee Don Cataluna, blocked Kauai County from building a residential drug treatment facility for juveniles on a former Humane Society site about a half mile from Kauai’s Hanapepe Salt Pond. This as young Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians are literally dying from methamphetamines and other drug abuse.

Kauai residents, including minors, have been required to leave the island for inpatient drug rehabilitation services ever since Serenity House was destroyed by Hurricane Iniki in 1992. After 14 years of waiting, Kauai Mayor Brian Baptiste broke ground on a new inpatient treatment facility at Hanapepe near the Salt Ponds in August 2006.

But now, thanks to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), construction has been halted and the location may be abandoned.

When the Army’s inevitable discovery of the DU rounds at Pohakuloa came, the activists’ agit-prop show took over the so-called mainstream media. The Hawaii Tribune Herald printed the double lie, “Radioactive find at PTA fuels fears” as its Aug. 26 headline. It is wrong on both counts: It is completely false to call DU a “radioactive find” unless it would be correct to call the potassium-40 laden protesters, “radioactive activists.” Secondly the activists are not fearful but utterly thrilled to discover that DU is present on the Big Island. As Albertini said, “This is going to be bigger than Agent Orange.”

Hurricane Flossie gave Hawaii emergency planners exactly what they needed—another lucky miss. Passing south of South Point, Flossie generated little more than high choppy surf and gusty winds for Kau. Hilo and Puna had very light winds and just over 2 inches of rain. County workers closed off beach access. Schools and state and county offices were closed Tuesday and Wednesday.

In Kau and coastal areas of Hilo and Puna, many businesses and residential windows were taped and a few were boarded up. The county opened up 10 emergency shelters mostly in buildings where windows had been replaced by wooden jalousies shielded by metal grilles to protect against flying debris.

Jihad vs. McWorld is the name of a March, 1992 essay and a 1996 book published by Benjamin Barber. Barber, a social democratic “third-roader,” argues that both tribal warfare “jihad,” and what he sees as the “threat” of globalism, equally endanger democracy in the post-cold war world. Now, nearly a decade and a half after Barber’s essay appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, it appears that leading anti-globalization activists worldwide have stopped equivocating and decided that globalism is the greater threat. They have teamed up with jihad.

“OK, if they ask you are you related to this person or that, just say yes, OK?”

With that instruction, non-Hawaiian sovereignty activist Shelly Stephens, who sometimes calls herself “Makaala Nakoa” sent three Hawaiians into the Hilo courtroom of Third Circuit Court Judge Greg Nakamura on February 1.

About 500 abortions are performed in Hilo every year.

Running unopposed in the November General Election, Takamine (D-N Hilo, Hamakua, N Kohala) received the predictable campaign contributions from unions. What may be more surprising to readers are the contributions he received from Political Action Committees (PACs) representing Hawaii big business.

...three schools - Hauula Public Charter School, Hawaiian Renaissance Public Charter School of the Arts and the American Heritage Academy - filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of the Inspector General and Hawaii's Attorney General....

Plates and glasses smashed to the floor, books came flying off the shelves and TVs slid off tables across Kohala, Kona and Hamakua districts of the Big Island Sunday morning as a 6.7 temblor shook the Big Island.

Rep. Ed Case called the Democratic Senate Primary vote on Sept. 23, “a Choice between past and future” and explained on his campaign Web site: "This election gives Hawaii's voters a choice between the way things have been in Hawaii and national politics and the way they can and should be. I believe our political culture is broken and must change, and that this election asks voters to choose between the status quo and a better way forward."

But Hawaii Democratic Primary voters said “no.”

Big Island Rancher Larry Mehau, resplendent in a dazzling white “Akaka for Senate” campaign T-shirt, welcomed over 100 Hawaii County Democratic activists to a campaign rally at his Big Island ranch on Sunday, Aug. 27, for U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-HI.  Several of Hawaii’s Political Candidates Show Face Including Congressional Candidates Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz and Gubernatorial Candidate Randy Iwase....

...condemn thousands of Native Hawaiian families to turn over 30 percent to 50 percent their property to the United States federal government when the inevitable occurs....

A Tokyo-based newspaper reports in its Friday AM edition that North Korea’s failed Taepodong-2 missile was aimed at an area of the ocean close to Hawaii.

...That was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life....

Gov. Lingle has done a service to autistic children everywhere by rejecting the Thimerosal claims. This is one step away from fear mongering claims which might make for a nice juicy lawsuit one day and a step towards autism research which could discover the real cause(s) and develop real treatments.

Thousands of lives are at stake but the Democrats and their trial lawyer donors care only about the opportunity for more ill gotten gains. The fact that these gains might be made at the expense of the lives of children who are infected by diseases which might have been prevented by vaccines made no longer available due to lawsuit liability is of no concern to them.

This contradiction goes to the root of the bizarre political coalition Kona-side. People who were likely conservatives when they lived on the mainland are electing left-wing extremists to the Council. One of their first acts was to install Sierra Club attorney David Frankel as County Legislative Auditor. Frankel had selected Jack Kelly (now PKO Vice-President) as the Sierra Club’s employee to target the Hokulia development. Kelly is one of the four plaintiffs who have demanded $4 million in personal “compensation” from Hokulia according to documents released by Hokulia developer Oceanside 1250.

The day after Iraq’s stunning December 15 election success, the New York Times wrote, "Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the …(National Security Agency) has monitored the international telephone calls and international email messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible ‘dirty numbers’ linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications." ... the local media, and The New York Times all chose not to mention that President Bill Clinton asserted his authority to conduct physical searches "for foreign intelligence purposes" without a warrant in Executive Order 12949, dated Feb. 9, 1995, during the Bosnia War.

“Nancy Aleck, the dynamic Exec. Director of the People's Fund, a progressive, grassroots, small-grants ($3,000 limit) organization, will be on the Big Island during Sept. 20-23 to present information and grant request forms ….”

With Hurricane Jova and two other major other storms lined up in formation, Oahu Civil Defense planners describe a shortfall of 60,000 spaces in evacuation plans which are themselves designed to shelter only about one-third of Oahu`s population. These numbers sound bad enough, but they grotesquely understate the problem.

The Hokulia case is becoming a bald-faced attempt....

After a tragic hit-and-run accident on Hilo’s East Kahaopea Street killed 22-year-old Dale K. Tim Sing, his family members are now being ordered by Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) Trustee Linda Dela Cruz to remove the shrine they erected at the spot where he died.

PBS Hawai`i’s propaganda piece on the life of Hawai`i communist Koji Ariyoshi should be required viewing for lovers of freedom who understand the value of knowing their enemy. Somehow the program manages to tell the story of Hawai'i's most prominent Communist without once letting on that Ariyoshi was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, USA.

When questioned by this writer at a September, 2004 movie presentation in Hilo, Future producer Garcia suggested that Pepto-Bismol might be an alternative solution for dying African babies. She also acknowledged that no human has ever been shown to have been harmed by GMOs -- but emphasized that anti-GMO activists were working hard to find someone, somewhere -- suffering from food allergies or other as yet undiscovered disorders for which GMOs might yet be blamed.

Garcia’s attitude of callous disregard for the effects of her victories on the under-developed world’s poorest people is nothing new in the anti-GMO movement.

...Mendocino County, where marijuana is reputedly the single largest cash crop, on March 2, 2004, passed a voter initiative outlawing genetically modified (GM) crops from farmers’ fields. This initiative bans all genetically modified plants--including GM marijuana....