Now that Mufi Hannemann has officially announced his intention to run for Governor of Hawaii, he has to resign from his seat as Honolulu Mayor by July 20, 2010. That will allow many people to pull papers and run for the office of mayor during a special election that will be held this fall.
This will allow Dr. Panos Prevedouros to once again run for mayor of Honolulu. Like I did in 2008, I will support Dr. Prevdouros's run for Honolulu Mayor. Let the campaigns begin!
We are pleased that Mufi Hannemann has finally decided to run for Governor but we are disappointed that he did not resign from his current position as Mayor of Honolulu.
For several months now he has been campaigning for Governor and collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars for his run for Governor while at the same time receiving full salary from Honolulu taxpayers. This is clearly not in the best interest of Oahu.
Hannemann needs to do the right thing and resign immediately or at least commit to resign by June 30, 2010 so that the Council has adequate time to declare a Honolulu Mayor race that can take place at no extra cost during the September Primary Elections.
We look forward to the race for Honolulu mayor. We're ready to stop the rail, and ready to fix Oahu with Smart Sensible Solutions.
Now located near the State Capitol and the State Library building on Punchbowl Street. Simply Ono has one of the best lunchwagon menus around. Gotta try their herbal roasted chicken, furakake fish dishes, Hawaiian plate, and chicken taco salad. Their menu is up at:
This is the first post where selected photos from my Flickr site will just be entered here because I thought the photo and/or the subject are interesting enough to stand as a blog entry without a very long commentary. Some of these photos are also crossposted to my Flickr photo blog. Many of the photos accompanying my previous posts over the years are already pulled from my Flickr site.
Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou won the First District Special Congressional Election last night (May 22). In the 3-way winner-take-all election, Republican Djou beat 2 prominent Democrats, former Congressman Ed Case and State Senate President Colleen Hanabusa.
The election results are posted below (from the Hawaii Elections office):
Congressman-elect Djou has his work cut out for him. He has to not only represent Hawaii in Congress for the next few months, but will also have to stage an even larger election campaign for the fall. The combined total of the two losing Democrats in this election stand at 100,193. Djou got 67,610. He still needs more than 33,000 votes to win this fall.
All numbers aside, Djou can relish in his victory tonight and possibly for the week. The work ahead will be immense if Djou is to win this fall.
The Small Business Hawaii Entrepreneurial Education Foundation held its 3rd Annual Small Business Awards Banquet on Friday night, May 21 at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu.
Awarded were Veronica Kaneko of McDonalds Restaurants of Hawaii as the SBH Business Person of the Year; Robin Campaniano of AIG Hawaii/Farmers Insurance Hawaii for the SBH Jean Fukuda Civic Leadership Award; Stephan Edwards of 1 Hot Garage and The Systemcenter, Inc. as the SBH Young Entrepreneur; and Brook Gramann & Glora Garvey of The Brand Strategy Group as SBH Small Business Booster.
The banquet also featured entertainment by jazz vocalist Ginai, accompanied by her partner Pierre Grill. The emcee was Joe Teipel of Auction Action.
There was a silent auction that featured a variety of merchandise and services.
The Small Business Hawaii Entrepreneurial Education Foundation is a Hawaii 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation, whose mission is "to educate, support and encourage entrepreneurs in our community and the world."
"Hawaii Five-0" is coming back to CBS network TV in a new form. The network announced this past week that a complete reboot of "Hawaii Five-0" will air during the Fall 2010 season on Monday nights at 10 pm (9 pm Hawaii time).
The new "Hawaii Five-0" will have an all new cast, and according to many news sources, is not a sequel to the original but a total re-boot or re-imagining if you will. The young cast includes:
Alex O'Loughlin as Detective Steve McGarrett
Scott Caan as Detective Danny "Danno" Williams
Daniel Dae Kim as Detective Chin Ho Kelly
Grace Park as Detective Kona "Kono" Kalakaua
Jean Smart as Governor Patricia "Pat" Jameson
Taryn Manning as Mary Ann McGarrett
The new show is being produced by Peter Lenkov, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci who did a reboot of the Star Trek series with a new movie in 2009. The show is supposed to be shot in Hawaii. The pilot was done on Oahu this past spring.
The new "Hawaii Five-0" comes just in time after the long running ABC TV series "Lost" ended its run this year. That show shot mostly on Oahu and brought in more than $400 million into the state's economy over the last 6 years. Cast member Daniel Dae Kim is already a familiar face in Hawaii as he played the character Jin on "Lost" since the program's start in 2004.
I am cautiously optimistic that the new "Hawaii Five-0" can become a hit, if they keep most of the elements of the original show intact. A good start is the theme song which has already been released to the public and can be viewed and listened to by selecting the video at the very top.
The one thing that I am concerned about is that one of the producers said that comedy will be included as part of the new show. As I recall after watching the original "Five-0" for many years, that the program was just hard hitting and contained almost no comedic parts at all. I am afraid that comedy in the rebooted "Hawaii Five-0" may not work for the old time fans of the original.
Ratifying a new, one page values oriented “platform” under the banner of LLIFE(Life, Limited Government, Individual Responsibility, Fiscal Accountability and Equality of Opportunity) was the center of the 2010 Hawaii Republican Party convention. GOP delegates, supporters and the faithful attended in droves (my estimate of about 400 attendees included more than 250 delegates from 51 house districts) to discuss and ratify the LLIFE “platform”, adopt several non-binding resolutions and listen to speeches by various GOP candidates including Lt. Governor James “Duke” Aiona (running for Governor), First Congressional district candidate Charles Djou, State Senator Sam Slom and Rep. Lynn Finnegan who is also running for Lt. Governor.
The convention also marked the last time that Governor Linda Lingle addressed the crowd as the state’s chief executive. Her speech focused on why Republicans say “no” to new taxes and bigger government while also addressing the future, young people and the new platform.
While the LLIFE platform was the main event of the convention, supporters and other attendees were somewhat unsure of whether or not the proposed document would pass. The Hawaii Republican Assembly (HAR) had proposed an alternate platform based on a concept of a “Contract With Hawaii” to members earlier in the week. It was presented as an amendment to the LLIFE platform by HAR chair, Paul Smith. The amendment was turned down by a floor vote after which the LLIFE platform was passed with an overwhelming but not unanimous majority of the delegates.
My take on the platform? LLIFE is a good start, kind of like the opening page to a bigger opus. It is not issues focused which is what members such as myself think the platform should contain. The Republican Party will offer an ongoing, issues database that is supposed to be periodically updated over the next 2 years. The 2010 LLIFE platform was voted for in whole to include the one page LLIFE document as well as the mostly unseen database portion, which is available online for just connected members to view with computers. I voted “no” because of this.
If anyone asked or wants to see what the Hawaii Republican Party’s stand on a specific issue like rail transit or the Akaka Bill is, those items and many others are not in the platform.
The HAR “Contract With Hawaii” addresses action points based on current issues including eliminating the general excise tax from food, residential rent and medical expenses; fiscal notes for all proposed state legislation; full disclosure of all campaign contributors and donors; tax equity; school vouchers; and a constitutional amendment for initiative, referendum and recall.
The Hawaii Republican Party LLIFE platform has been adopted by some of the candidates this year. Others have decided not to use it.
LLIFE or not, the bottom line for the Hawaii Republicans is to win elections. The party may have a good start if Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou actually beats the two Democrats in the upcoming special election. If he does, the victory will hopefully translate to Republican wins in other state and county races.
About the Photos: I shot more than 500 photos at the convention. The above gallery represent 20 of the best ones. More can be viewed on my Flickr page on the convention or though the linked Flickr slide show.
Have you checked to see how "secure" your Facebook information is? As many of you may know, Facebook has one of the poorest privacy policies and reputation on the internet. They share way too many items of information about you with third parties, many times without your knowledge.
You can analyze and fix most of your privacy levels by running the scanning tool from www.reclaimprivacy.org/.
A good article on Facebook privacy can also be found at Tidbits, the online Apple Macintosh resource. The Facebook privacy article there applies to users of all computer platforms - Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone, etc.
In this screenshot from my Facebook page above using the reclaimprivacy.org scanner the green bars at the top indicate that my Facebook profile is in good shape because I have opted out of many sharing options, don't do third party apps and games. I basically set my privacy levels to the most secure possible setting. A red bar is generally not very good. In my case the scanner flagged the red item and gave me a link on where I can go to fix it.
If you are extremely concerned about your Facebook privacy, the best thing to do is discontinue your Facebook account and delete your profile. The Tidbits article has information on how to do that.
Just remember that anything you post on the internet is "not private" and stays on the internet practically forever.
Governor Linda Lingle and CT &T CEO Young Gi Lee signed a "memorandum of understanding" (MOU) in which the State of Hawaii will support the Korean firm's plans to build an electric vehicle assembly plant somewhere on Oahu. CT & T is a South Korean firm that builds several models of electric vehicles designed for personal and fleet use.
The company's proposed plant will employ up to 400 people and build about 10,000 2-seater electric vehicles per year. The location for the manufacturing facility was not disclosed at today's press conference, but will be built somewhere on Oahu.
The vehicles are all electric and are about the size of large golf carts. They are designed for light industrial, government and commercial use as well as for personal transportation. They come in two distinct model classes, the more car-like and upscale eZone and the utilitarian cZone. Each vehicle can be configured for different types of uses. The models on display at the State Capitol included a police cruiser (for use in parking patrol), a personal transport, lunch wagon, utility car, plate lunch truck and pick-up truck.
Cost range from about $8000 to $20,000 per vehicle depending on model and options. The cZone models are able to reach speeds of up to 25 mph. The eZone can reach speeds of up to 60 mph.
It remains to be seen whether or not these small electric cars will be successful in the Hawaii market. A handful of firms have sold or are selling electric cars. Most recently Nissan announced that the Nissan Leaf will be available for sale in Hawaii starting next year.
Governor Lingle talks about the CT & T assembly plant proposal.
CT & T's eZone coupe. The vehicle will be assembled in Hawaii.
The Hawaii State Legislature adjourned the 2010 session on April 29 by raising more taxes and passing a very divisive civil unions bill. Opponents of HB 444 sit in the House gallery with their white shirts and red buttons on. The House sneaked HB 444 on to the agenda in the last minutes of the 2010 session and passed out the civil unions bill by a 31 to 20 margin (see Dishonor Roll of State Legislators Who Voted for HB 444).
Many photographers were in the Hosue gallery on April 29 taking photographing most of the day's proceedings.
With the damage done, House members greet Senate members on the House floor on the last day of the 2010 Legislature. What damage hath the Legislature brought on to the people?
The passed HB 444, the civil unions bill at the last minute.
They passed the barrel tax bill which increases the tax on a barrel of oil from 5 cents to $1.05 each. That tax increase will be passed on to all of us with higher gasoline prices and electricity costs. Remember, electricity in Hawaii is generated mostly with fossil fuel. Liberals, environmental wackos and all of the legislators who voted in favor of HB 2421 are to be blamed for this added hit to our pocketbooks.
A $67 million raid on the Hurricane Insurance Relief Special Fund (SB 2124) to pay for HSTA union teacher for additional instructional [furlough] days. What if a hurricane hits Hawaii this year? Hurricane season starts on June 1 and ends on November 30.
Anyone who needs a traffic abstract will have to pay $20 instead of $7 that have been charged for many years. Legislators passed SB 2159 to make that happen.
Democrats are well known for protecting their own kind. This year they passed the "Vexatious" requester bill which disallows multiple requests for the same piece of information by the same person from government agencies. SB 2937 was passed to prevent citizens from inquiring about President Barrack Hussein Obama's alleged Hawaii birth certificate. No one has seen the birth certificate, so unless it is publicly revealed, the status of that document is "alleged".
The multi-page State Budget (HB 2200) has many tax and fee increases buried in its pages that target specific groups and individuals.
Do you buy dietary supplements that come in a bottle? That bottle will be subjected to the beverage container tax which is the same for soft drink and water bottles. (HB 2239).
A solid waste tax? Yes, for items shipped out of state. (HB 1987).
Got a tax refund coming? The legislature passed HB 1948 which will delay yours for at least 90 days.
Most of these bills and many others passed by the State Legislature this year will increase the cost of living and doing business in Hawaii. The Governor vetoed a few of the bills. The legislature has overridden most of them so far.
For the majority of bills, the Governor has a 45 day window which started on April 29 in which to make her mind up on all of the bills passed.Call, write, fax or email the Governor and tell her what you think about the bad legislation. Hopefully she will veto the worst of the worst bills.
The status and details of every bill can be found at the Hawaii State Legislature's website:
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