Honolulu City Council

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The Honolulu City Council is comprised of only nine (9) Districts. But its legislative powers are far-reaching for the entire island of Oahu.

The Council has a monthly Public Hearing throughout the year. There are also monthly committee meetings. Annually, there is a dedicated budget hearing session from March to June where all the budget deliberations are presented and decided upon. There can also be other Special Hearings held at Honolulu Hale or Kapolei Hale or any other designated site.

Its powers include real property taxation (it’s main source of revenues), approving or disapproving of budget items for the city’s operations and capital projects. It also legislate zoning and its related ordinances – where you can build a business shop or whether you can have a nursing home or set up a large scale farm. It regulates quiet hours, fireworks, shoreline setbacks, building codes, transportation like the Honolulu Rapid Transit Project, sewer plants, and so on. It also nominates and approve candidates to boards and commissions. In other words, the Honolulu City Council affects you life, a lot.

The 9 members have term-limits. Each can serve up to two consecutive four (4) years term. However, a former city council member can run again after a lapse of one term.

The city council alternates in the election cycle. One election would open up the even-number districts of 2, 4, 6, and 8 and the other set of 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9.

The most coveted positions, in order of significance, are the Chair, Vice-Chair, Budget Committee, Planning and Zoning Committee, Transportation, Sustainability and Health, Housing and the Economy, Executive Matters and Legal Affairs, Public Infrastructure and Technology, Parks and Community Services, and Public Safety.

The City Council is the legislative Branch which creates the policy-making, laws and ordinances. The Office of the Mayor is the Executive Branch where the Mayor is supposed to implement the legislative mandates from the City Council, besides managing the operations of the city and county of Honolulu.

We strongly encourage you to find out who your city council member is. Keep their email and telephone number. Feel free to communicate with them and ask lots of questions, offer suggestions and ask them to meet with you in your communities. Too often, huge and consequential bills are passed without much public participation. Often times, the customary hour session for recognition and awards are more packed with residents than the main decision-making public hearing session after.

A city council member is as active and responsive in the communities as you make them out to be. Hold them accountable. They need your vote. They are paid by you, the taxpayers of Honolulu.

We can all help protect the children

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Through the ages, children have been exploited in one form or another. We collectively need to do what we can to speak up or report. We adults can find opportunities to protect the children in our sphere of influence. It could be something as simple as saying a kind word or help in our communities through volunteering, labor laws, healthcare, trafficking, drugs, domestic violence and so on.

This is one of the historical photos that is so compelling.

Oyster shuckers from South Carolina in 1912. Josie (6 years old), Bertha (6 years old) and Sophie (10 years old) would start work at 4am at the Maggioni Canning Co. PC: Lewis Wickes Hine

Elections 2022: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

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As hilarious as it sounded, it was a memorable line.

Remember when the late former secretary of state Madeleine Albright introduced trailing Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders at a rally in New Hampshire on Saturday in 2016?

Hillary Clinton ended up losing to Senator Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. But Clinton would cinch the Democratic Party’s Nomination only to lose to Donald Trump.

2016 – Former Secretary of State: “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Enter Vicky Cayetano a woman candidate for the 2022 Gubernatorial Primary in Hawaii. She faced relentless discrimination, unlike her male opponents.

By all indications, the 66-year-old Vicky Cayetano has led a remarkable, principled, and compassionate life with much to show for and contribute to Hawaii. An immigrant from The Philippines to Los Angeles to Honolulu, she and her family worked hard and succeeded.

Vicky was an single mother of two who started a successful laundry service business that eventually employed about 1,000 workers. She would meet Governor Ben Cayetano, married him on May 5, 1997 and become the First Lady of Hawaii.

At the age of 66, she felt the need to leave a legacy to help Hawaii get out of its doldrums. She self-financed her gubernatorial campaign with about $3 Million.

Just the ability to “walk the talk” by spending her own money should had caused voters to pause. To think that this was one candidate who was not beholden to massive corporate funding like her opponent Lt. Governor Josh Green was.

It didn’t matter that Vicky Cayetano was a serious and no-nonsense executive who had successfully ran a successful business for 32 years. Start-up entrepreneurs like Vicky Cayetano have innate and unique traits – imagination, can-do mindset, independent, and quick study. These traits are needed to prosper Hawaii.

Vicky Cayetano was not a career politician who had carefully mapped out her political ladder. Otherwise, we would seen a methodical and cultivated of social media presence or like posting photos of serving food to the homeless or the like.

However, she had a good record of genuine interest and compassion in helping Hawaii through her own unique ways like serving on business boards, forming a scholarship for college students or helping the Hawaii Humane Society with rescue animals or helping to save the 64-member Honolulu Symphony and so on.

Instead of looking into the great possibilities and capabilities of this authentic candidate, the opposition focus was on very superficial but persistent fallacies like:

“ Ben Cayetano is going to control her “. This was a insult to public intelligence and to an independent, intelligent and capable woman. It implies that a successful woman like Vicky Cayetano cannot be her own person with her own mind.

Ben Cayetano served as the fifth governor of the State of Hawaii from 1994 to 2002. That was a long time ago. Ben Cayetano had an independent and maverick record that include shaking the established BIG 5 and also the Bishop Estate Trust.

How unfortunate. The State of Hawaii missed a good opportunity to create a paradigm shift for the better. Vicky Cayetano has the credentials, skills, experience, mindset and compassion to lift Hawaii. But she was a woman whom a focused social media campaign painted as someone who would be a puppet of her husband or not qualified or capable of being a Governor.

The only woman Governor Hawaii had was Linda Lingle, a Republican.

What would the late Madeleine Albright say about this lost opportunity for Hawaii – this candidate who happened to be a woman?

A raw truth from a reliable source

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This is a raw truth to think about.

“Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist and commentator.

Kasparov became the youngest ever undisputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at age 22 by defeating then-champion Anatoly Karpov.

In 1997 he became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer under standard time controls when he lost to the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue in a highly publicized match.

Since retiring, he devoted his time to politics and writing.

He formed the United Civil Front movement and joined as a member of The Other Russia, a coalition opposing the administration and policies of Vladimir Putin.

In 2008, he announced an intention to run as a candidate in that year’s Russian presidential race, but after encountering logistical problems in his campaign, for which he blamed “official obstruction”, he withdrew.

In the wake of the Russian mass protests that began in 2011, he announced in 2013 that he had left Russia for the immediate future out of fear of persecution.

Following his flight from Russia, he had lived in New York City with his family. Kasparov is currently chairman of the Human Rights Foundation and chairs its International Council. In 2017, he founded the Renew Democracy Initiative (RDI), an American political organization promoting and defending liberal democracy in the U.S. and abroad.”

Elections 2022: Are Corporate Media nasty copycats?

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It appears Civil Beat’s Nick Grube first broke the story of Congressman Kai Kahele’s “proxy” votes on April 11, 2022. Unfortunately, this “proxy” report spun out of control without much verification and undermined Kahele’s campaign.

Grube wrote that: “Kahele’s absence has not gone unnoticed, according to two Washington-based lobbyists who spoke to Civil Beat on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so by their firms.“

” . . . on the condition of anonymity” caught my attention. My first instinct was to google-search Congressman Kahele’s voting record. Voting by “proxy” is still a vote. Remember we’re undergoing a COVID19 pandemic.

Public information shows Congressman Kahele has a good record. Why was this critical public information not part of Grube’s reporting?

From Jan 2021 to Aug 2022, Kahele missed 6 of 869 roll call votes, which is 0.7%. This is better than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving.

Unfortunately, the Civil Beat’s negative reporting of Kahele’s “proxy” lit like a wildfire. Other corporate media jumped on the bandwagon and added their own headlines. Social media comments and trolls continued the negative connotations against Kahele.

One has to ask if this was an intended negative politicking, the first salvo to undermine Kahele.

Does Civil Beat not like Congressman Kahele as it obviously does not like former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard?

Or did this article about Kahele’s “proxy” vote (with the assumption of no intended malice) simply spun out of control?

Should the public should be alarmed with this type of reporting?

Should readers be less dependent on corporate media for facts and information?

Are corporate media copycats of each other without verifying first?

Unfortunately, this was one negative salvo that Congressman Kahele could not contain.

Social media perpetuated the “proxy” vote as if Kahele had gone AWOL. Congressman Kahele is our District Representative. We were impressed and pleased with his “boots in the ground” style for Hawaii residents. He’s been present at Honolulu city council and other community meetings. This may be unconventional but he certainly could not be described as having a “chronic allergy to Capitol Hill“. Proxy votes are allowed.

Additionally, the reporting of Congressman Kahele’s job with Hawaiian Airlines was negatively skewed as well. in 2021, Kahele has had a total of 14.2 flying hours and made less than $2,861.90.

This reduction of Kahele’s salary is not as alarming as the increased income of Hawaii’s Lt. Governor Dr. Josh Green, another gubernatorial candidate.

The Office of the Lt. Governor is a full-time position paying $165,552.00 a year. Dr. Green has continued to practice his medical career for the past 18 years. His recently formed Green Health International LLC reportedly saw an increase of about $1M. This gubernatorial candidate has thus far stone-walled calls for answers to these sources of income to his LLC.

Election 2022: Hawaii’s Democratic Party has no Mandate from the public

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August 13 Primary Elections is over. The General election to finally choose the candidates is Tuesday, November 8, 2022. Voters receive their ballots in the mail for the General Election by October 21, 2022

Considering it’s a mail-in elections, the Primary results are disappointing. Over half a million registered voters (515,397 60.4%) did not vote in the Primary.

To put the Primary Results in context, there is no mandate from the public at large for the Democratic Party:

Elections 2022 PRIMARY FINAL TALLY

853,874 Registered

338,477 (39.6%) voted

515,397 (60.4%) did not vote

EXAMPLE: The Gubernatorial Race Results

157,476 votes for Dr. Josh Green divided by registered voters (854,874) is ONLY about 18.44% of Hawaii’s registered voters.

This percentage can hardly be claimed as a mandate for the Democratic Party in Hawaii.

Providing a multi-party choice is good and a must for democracy. For the public interest and public good, our political culture ought to be one of encouraging ALL candidates with diversity of thoughts and ideas to participate.

I would encourage Republicans to reassess and work hard to offer a viable choice for the people of Hawaii.

In the next 2024 elections, hopefully Aloha Aina, Green Party, Independent, and others will regroup and try again!

Republican Duke Aiona has served as a circuit court Judge and also Lt. Governor for 8 years. Josh Green has been in his Lt.Governor office for the past 4 years and also works as a non-board certified doctor.

Another interesting point to consider is this: It was reported early in the August 13, 2022 Primary Night that about 730.000 ballots were mailed out.

But the final tally for the August 13, 2022 was 854,874 registrations count.

That was an increase of about 124,874 registration. It appears to be a very accelerated amount in a very short time.

Elections 2022: PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE trolling to confuse and control public conversations

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Here is an example of PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE and insidious trolling against political opponents. This is the context article of what I perceive to have electioneering trolling in its Comments Section. I’m willing to be corrected if I’m wrong. But I’ve seen many trolls coming out of the woodwork against Vicky Cayetano and Kai Kahele during the Primary Gubernatorial Race.

This article above was written on August 12, 2022. Primary Elections was August 13, 2022. Enter this commenter about Kai Kahele in this article continuing the “proxy” smear:

I was curious and checked. It turned out that watchfuleye was born on August 12, 2022, the same day of this article:

I took the time to respond to watchfuleye for clarifications and posted the following comments on the Civil Beat article. But my comments below were apparently censored and did not appear in the comments section:

” From Jan 2021 to Aug 2022, Kahele missed 6 of 869 roll call votes, which is 0.7%. This is better than the median of 2.1% among the lifetime records of representatives currently serving.”

Congressman Kahele has a good record. It was lobbyists who complained about Kahele being inaccessible to them in DC!

Watchfuleye just joined this forum on August 12 to post his pilau comments. This passive-aggressive political stagecraft insults the public intelligence.

No politician has to be a cookie-cutter, especially during these past COVID years. Kai Kahele has been our District Congressman. We have been impressed with his “boots in the ground” style. Kahele has been to city council and community meetings working on issues these past two years.“

I vigourously encourage you to look out for possible trolling. Ask them if they’re trolling politely. Let’s question them. If we’re wrong, we’ll apologize.

Democracy is best served through honest and intelligent dialogue in the open public square. Trolling and hiding behind fake names to attack opponents with falsehoods or smearing is despicable and unethical.