Tag Archives: Vicky Cayetano

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?

Elections 2022 – Invasion of fake trolls to confuse and distract voters in public conversations

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I’m interested in observing the techniques of campaigns and its operators. Some campaigns appear to readily exploit the social media loopholes and play dirty. Social media platform like Facebook hosts anonymity and fake accounts. Thus the birth of bad actors and trolls to confuse, distract and smear opponents. I’ve noticed lots of these public comments against Vicky Cayetano and Kai Kahele.

On a quite side note, it’s no surprise that Elon Musk’s failed $44 Billion acquisition of Twitter is partly related to the “proportion of fake and spam accounts on the platform.” Twitter acknowledges that it has “false or spam accounts on its platform.”

Here is a troll example that we can examine:

Context: Lt. Governor Josh Green has been at the State Capitol for 18 years as a legislator as well as a doctor. The office of the Lt. Governor is a full-time position but Green continues his medical profession. Green is constantly seen in his medical scrub all over Hawaii. Green has cleverly branded himself as a “trusted caring” doctor in his political campaign.

The public began to question his medical training and credentials when “Dr. Green” positioned himself as the expert during the pandemic management for the State of Hawaii. He held countless confusing and contradicting press conferences. Green is not an epidemiologist but says he’s an emergency care doctor. Independent residents say it’s all about Green getting free airtime for his gubernatorial aspirations.

inevitably, the issue of being “board certified” became a thorn in his side. The record appears to show that Dr. Joshua Green is not “board certified”.

Recently, Dr. Green, in his grubs, stated that he was “board certified”. Whether Green is certified or not is a non-issue. However, it’s his discrepancies that alarm voters. There is continuous social buzz about this discrepancy.

Enter the disinformation or damage control for Dr. Green:

EXAMPLE: This is candidate Kai Kahele’s FACEBOOK page:

Below is the out-of-nowhere comments written about “Josh Green” on Kai Kahele’s post above. Note the introduction of confusing jabber and gibberish in the comments. The troll further went to drag in anti-semitism for whatever motive there may be. I QUESTIONED the troll simply because I was curious and wanted clarity.

For the sake of clarity, I posted a question ( See comment above) to ask if this person were a troll. Almost immediately, the FB account became unavailable as below. Does this action point to a troll account?

Below was a screenshot of what the troll account looked like. The entire troll comment in Kai Kahele’s post is now deleted.

I have seen tons and tons of these similar posts. For the sake of honest and intelligent dialogue in our democracy, I encourage all to public question comments like the above. Do it politely.

We must protect robust and intelligent dialogue in our democratic society. Get rid of bad actors and dirty games.

Elections 2022: Lt. Governor Dr. Josh Green continues to stonewall questions about his campaign finances

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Vicky Cayetano and Kai Kahele held an unprecedented joint press conference in Honolulu on Wednesday, July 27, 2022 in an effort to get answers from Dr. Josh Green.

Questions have been raised about Dr. Josh Green’s sources of income to his Green Health International LLC at various forums. But an agitated Green always stonewall those questions by quickly responding with his usual ” I’m being attacked” ploy. The Corporate media does not question the candidate further after that.

On July 31, 2022, an article again reported Dr. Green’s stonewalling – – “His campaign declined to release the names of those entities.” That was that.

In the interest of an OPEN and TRANSPARENT government, these questions should be answered now, not after the elections. The public has the right to know. Green has a record of being a “pay to play” politician.

Lt. Governor Dr. Josh Green, though not an epidemiologist, positioned himself as the expert of COVID 19 management these past pandemic years. The Federal government infused about $18 Billion into Hawaii during these confusing and fast-paced years.

Hawaii’s most recently received $1.6 BILLION in pandemic relief funding provided by the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) in 2021. There were other earlier funds from the CARES Act and direct relief to residents totaling about $18 Billion.

Jill Tokuda reported in May 9, 2021:

” Approximately $350 million of our CRF funds was allocated to respond to the immediate health crisis. COVID testing, contact tracing and public health expenses represented more than $1 out of every $4 CRF dollars.“

The Press Conference is worth listening to. The full-time Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii has an annual salary of $165,552. Dr. Josh Green has continued to work as an “emergency care” doctor. Additionally, his Green Health International LLC increased in income these past years.

The public is curious and has the right to know. Dr Green should just disclose the sources of his increased income to his private LLC willingly.

Elections 2022: Campaign Finance Reform can begin with our vote

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The Honolulu Star Advertiser hosted a digital town hall on June 29, 2022 for the top three presumptive gubernatorial candidates – Vicky Cayetano, Josh Green, and Kai Kahele.

Yunji de Nies and Ryan Kalei Tsuji hosted the hour-long program.

For those who did not watch the Star Advertiser Spotlight Forum, I’m highlighting the Campaign Finance Reform issue.

About the 50:00 timeline, Representative Kai Kahele retorted at Lt. Governor Green’s comments about leading by example:

” … for the Lt Gov Green to talk about leading by example, frankly, it’s a joke because his (Green) campaign is funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars by outside mainland donors, corporations, special interests, big pharma, maxed dollar donors , wealthy individuals from the mainland that want to control the economic and political life of this state.”

Green was visibly irritated and quickly responded that he was disappointed by Kahele’s “attack” and it was not appropriate as he (Green) was a “hardworking doctor and Lt. governor “.

Green again implemented the red herring fallacy to distract from his own record and accused Kahele of “sensationalism”. Green proceeded to accusing Kahele’s of donations from indicted Mitsunaga and others.

However, it must be noted that this federal indictment case is very specific. It’s focused on the Honolulu City Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro who received donations from Mitsunaga & Associates to prosecute one of Dennis Mitsunaga’s former employee.

Kahele should have brought up Green’s most egregious Pay to Play quid pro quo . The Carpenter’s Union donated about $1M at the last minute to Green in 2018 to edge over Jill Tokuda.

Green in turn dutifully appointed one of its union officials as his Chief of Staff.

Is money buying elections?

Isn’t this a blatant example of PAY TO PLAY?

Green’s action is very significant because the Chief of Staff controls the office of the Lt. Governor and its operations. His Deputy Chief of Staff is from the Healthcare Sector. His Senior Policy Advisor is from the Insurance sector.

I didn’t take it as an “attack” when Kahele highlighted Green’s donations from the mainland interests, unions, maxed out donors, big pharma, and so on.

Candidates cannot run away nor be offended by their own record. The Public has every right to question and raise concerns to hold the candidate accountable.

This is why Campaign Finance Reform is so critical. If this cancer is not controlled, candidates who are willing to play along with special interests groups will continue to receive donations. With these big donations, candidates are able to hire staff for their campaign, pay for expensive social media, television ads and so forth.

Candidates can literally reinvent themselves with sophisticated media propaganda and manipulated narratives for their desired outcome. The Status Quo continues.

Voters may feel outgunned and overwhelmed by campaign finance concerns. But elections are won vote by vote.

Voters have the power. Voters can make a conscious choice to boycott candidates with big donations from special interests.

Voters also need not feel the pressure to tell any one who they voted for.

Happy 4th of July!