Entries for February 2014

The poll, conducted by The Mellman Group, has Schatz leading by four percentage points....

... Demetra Demonte, Secretary of the Republican National Committee  provided special training on grassroots organizing to a capacity crowd ....

All Recent Polls Consistently Show Unfavorability for Current Administration Remains High....

It is expected to cost consumers $800 per year in higher food prices and many products could simply disappear from Hawaii shelves, but SB2521 is on the move thanks to Senator Clayton Hee....

Flashback: Senate Ways and Means Chairman David Ige rained rhetorical bombs on the Department of Education for what he called a "Cadillac" system to evaluate teacher performance....

Interested persons should submit an application, a resume and three letters of recommendation (attesting to the applicant’s character and integrity) postmarked by Friday, February 28, 2014....

When you and I pay our taxes, we probably expect that the money we pay in will be used toward any and all legitimate financial needs of the state....

Caldwell's Garbage Tax Would Hit Nonprofits, Small Business Hard....

The Hawaii Election Commission has released its candidate report for the week ending February 14, 2014....

The Candidate Advisory Council (CAC) for the Board of Regents of the University of  Hawai’i has presented a list of candidates to Governor Neil Abercrombie to fill three City & County of Honolulu seats and one Student seat....

Many consumers already resent Comcast for its poor customer service, as cataloged by the American Customer Satisfaction Index....

The Obama administration gave Hawaii $205 million in grants over the past three years to set up its state-run exchange....

The landmark decision came in the NRA-supported case of Peruta v. San Diego County....

...topics as varied as the illusory nature of the state budget surplus and the demands of rail....

Almost immediately after the World Wide Web made its debut some folks were hard at work figuring out a way to tax it....

...property rights and the rule of law are vital to reducing poverty around the world....

If the legislature is serious about fighting poverty in Hawaii, a broader and more comprehensive discussion is essential....

You file a crap brief with an appellate court. Shame on you....

...flags of the United States and State of Hawaii shall be flown at half-staff at all state offices and agencies, as well as the Hawaii National Guard, from sunrise to sunset on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2014, the day of his memorial service....

Dr. Rosen’s appointment is subject to state Senate confirmation....

...18 voted to bring the bill to a floor vote and 28 voted to recommit the bill to the committee where it is dead for this session....

Same sex marriage opens a Pandora Box of activist pressure on our schools....

It turns out they never needed the battery system in the first place.... 

...what was left of Ansaldo Breda would turn into a "bad company" to be gradually liquidated....

The “Nirvana” of a transit-, walking-, and cycling-oriented metropolitan area proves to be no Nirvana at all.... 

"The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m President of the United States of America." -- Sen Barack Obama, 2008

Rep. Bob McDermott, Richard Fale, Gene Ward, Jo Jordan and Marcus Oshiro address HB 1624....

...its major impact has been as a funding source for energy and food security initiatives....

...90% of the exposures occurred in a residence, 4.4% in the workplace and 1% in a school. The remaining 4% consisted of miscellaneous locations....

In Kihei, located on Maui's southwest shore, travelers will have to spend $416 per night ....

Obama, after less than five years in office, has already increased the debt limit by more than any other president in U.S. history....

The Hawaii legislature publicly debated and then rejected a pair of Azerbaijan-initiated anti-Armenian measures....

• DATE: Thursday, February 13, 2014
• TIME: 1:15 p.m.
• PLACE: Conference Room 225

...Xtreme Power earned the 15th spot on Inc. Magazine's 500/5000 list of the fast growing private companies in the U.S. in 2012--now they're BK....

...the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections....

Pono Choices, intended for young impressionable children, is clearly not age appropriate....

SB 2160, named Caylee’s Law for Caylee Anthony, would make it a felony if a parent or guardian does not report the death or disappearance (for more than 48 hours) of a child....

FLASHBACK Oct 18, 2013: “We urge you to allow Bill 2491 to become law.  We will be there to defend it.”....

After the first year of implementation, the state reduced its corrections population 4 percent, averted $2.5 million in costs, and allocated $3.4 million into its reinvestment strategies....

President Obama tells us that "health care costs are growing at the slowest rate in 50 years."....

These bills offer 50 million dollars in bonds for the Ikehu Molokai project proposed by Molokai Ranch and Princeton Energy....

Policymakers should adopt privacy measures to protect patients from potential problems with electronic health records....

Congress got tired of fighting. So now they’re working toward doing away with the debt limit altogether....

February 12, the House Committee on Veterans, Military, & International Affairs, & Culture and the Arts is scheduled to hear House Bill 2148 at 8:30 a.m., in House conference room 312....

If he loses their August showdown, Schatz will be the first appointee spurned in a primary since 1996....

How vibrant Hawaii’s fiscal health is depends on who you ask....