BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN AND JIM DOOLEY

The two vendors said they booked wagers from overseas and provided other inside details of the underground business.

They are two of dozens of Southeast Asian vendors in an elaborate network of lottery number retailers selling chances to win a jackpot.

During a six-month undercover investigation into the network, Hawaii Reporter obtained video of several of these transactions at various restaurants and stores in Chinatown with the help of a team of reporters.

There are many other small businesses owned by Laotian, Thai and Vietnamese entrepreneurs, who in addition to their regular business operations, also sell lottery numbers. They reportedly operate out of Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, a travel agency, a hair salon, a food court, Asian grocery stores, and several vegetable and fruit stands. There also are salespeople who have no formal storefront, but sell numbers directly to customers including friends, relatives and foreign laborers.

In an hour-long meeting, the two vendors confirmed they worked for one of two Laotian sisters sometimes called the “Queens of Lottery.” The sisters, Khemma Pannga Xoumanivong, 63, and Bounkouam Khamphilavanh, 47, allegedly ran the lottery business from their apartments in publicly subsidized low-income housing at Palolo Valley Homes. The sisters receive welfare benefits and show few  signs of wealth, other than a 2012 Mercedes Benz that one recently obtained. They also reportedly have financial and family ties to the Thai House restaurant in the Market City Shopping Center.

Federal agents and police raided the sisters' Palolo apartments, the restaurant and several Chinatown locations two weeks ago in what the FBI said is an ongoing investigation of an illegal gambling operation.

The two vendors said they were recruited several months ago by one of the sisters. They agreed to participate, they said, because it was a sure way to have access to the game.

The two said they made little money, keeping 10 percent of all transactions and reinvesting those minimal earnings back into buying their own lottery numbers. They hoped to win the lottery, they said, because their businesses are struggling financially, and meeting expenses each month has been extremely difficult.

They asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation for sharing closely-held secrets of how the network operates, and also because they know they have broken the law.  They are sorry for breaking the law, they said, and won’t sell the lottery any more.

Hawaii is only one of two states in the nation where any form of gambling is illegal, and in the case of this operation, it is unregulated, untaxed, and has no oversight to ensure winning bets are paid. The vendors said they don’t know of anyone who has won the lottery, and they never have, but held out hopes they would.

The vendors are more willing to talk about the network since the law enforcement raids April  30 and May 1. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internal Revenue Service and Homeland Security Investigations, along with Honolulu police, raided the Laotian sisters’ homes, cars and business on the evening of April 30, seizing a portable safe as well as records, receipts and ledgers.

The next morning,  agents confiscated records and receipts from four lottery vendors in Chinatown’s Maunakea Marketplace, including Adam’s Mini-Market, Siamese Monster and a vegetable stand labeled “110-C.”

Hong Fa grocery store, outside the marketplace, was also raided.

The raids essentially halted the operation, at least for now, said the vendors. Since then, the sisters’ network has shut down, and the sisters have not communicated with their network about what to say to federal authorities or what to do next, the two vendors said.

There reportedly are similar networks that continue to sell lottery numbers for different organizers not tied to the Queens.

The vendors who spoke to Hawaii Reporter said most of their lottery customers are from Hawaii, they also included clients in Thailand and Laos, who placed bets over the phone. They said foreign customers believe it is more lucrative to participate in an American black market lottery rather than their own legal government lottery or illegal lotteries back home.

The vendors said they always checked with the Queens to see if lottery numbers clients wanted to buy – combinations of either two or three digits – were available. Only a certain number of combinations of each could be booked.

Superstition drives some customers to select numbers mentioned in the American or Thai news. For example, numbers containing entertainer Whitney Houston's age (48) were quickly booked after news of her death broke February 11. Bettors in some cases added a 4 or 6 number before the 48 or 84, because 4 or 6 represent a woman (5 or 7 represent a man). Dreams about a specific individual can also influence wagers, the vendors said. Bettors may add the number 9 to the individual's age in their next wager.

While there is no formal tie to the national lottery operated by the government of Thailand, the Hawaii version is a copy of that lottery. Winning numbers are drawn on the 15^th and 30^th of every month in Thailand and the numbers that win there are the numbers awarded here in Hawaii.

A $10 bet on two matching numbers gets you $700; match three, you win $5,000.

Two recent Hawaii lottery winners reportedly won cash prizes as high as $100,000 and $200,000.

FBI Special Agent Tom Simon confirmed with Hawaii Reporter on May 1, “The underlying investigation involves allegations of an illegal gambling operation.” Simon declined to discuss details of the case.

Simon confirmed on May 16, “No one has been charged with a crime or is being arrested at this time.”

Neither of the "Queens of lottery" could be reached for comment.

An employee of the Thai House restaurant said the owners aren’t commenting on the raid.

Lingle appeared to be in distress before being wheeled off he stage by Lenny Klompus.

At last weekend's Republican Convention, U.S. Senatorial Candidate Linda Lingle seemed to suffer a catastrophic technical failure only five minutes into her prepared keynote speech. Just a few minutes into her dissertation on the need for more robotics-based industry in Hawaii a large patch of Ms Lingle face appeared to flop down.  At that point she removed her glove which revealed a large mechanical hand and began to paw at her face, making things worse, and uncovering more electronics and mechanized underpinnings.  At this point her media advisor, Lenny Klompus, placed a blanket over her and dragged her offstage. Within a couple of minutes, Mr Ted Liu appeared with another Linda Lingle, wearing a slightly different suit, who began her speech from the beginning, and continued for 20 minutes, after Mr. Liu made some adjustments to the back of her head.

Most of the delegates said they didn't see anything unusual.

The incident was missed by most of the audience, who appeared only mildly interested in the presentation. They may have simply been lulled into a state of deep relaxation by Lingle's soothing monotone delivery, punctuated with slight beeping noises.  When asked about what had happened and if she was feeling alright, Lingle would only say, "Must build more robots."

One delegate questioned about Ms. Lingle's odd behavior said, "No, she pretty much always talks about robots, that is not out of the ordinary at all."

When asked why the convention organizers did not allow her primary opponent John Carroll to address the group, while allowing Lingle 20 minutes as the keynote speaker, one answered, "Well, she has more money!"

Party officials also brushed off criticism about Lingle's speech being blatant campaigning even though Carroll was told this would not be allowed.

"I don't see anything in her speech that could be construed as a campaign message," said Lingle supporter Miriam Hellreich.

Here's a brief recap of the first part of Ms. Lingle's speech:

"Hello, press 3 for speech, press 6 for sign waving.  Hello I am LindaLingle, vote for me.  I am the only candidate.  Please ignore that John Carroll man in the lobby.  We put him next to the Ron Paul and Willis Lee tables  for a reason.  He is not a candidate...I am the only candidate.  Hello, my name is Linda Lingle.  Vote for me. Must build more robots, must build more robots....pause, pause, pause. Deleted.  OK.  Please disregard the previous statement it is not relevant and has been deleted. Hello, I am Linda Lingle.  Vote for me."

First, this week it was discovered that White House staff had edited the biographies of many past presidents onwhitehouse.gov to include a bullet point or two inserting President Obama into each historical narrative.

For example, while President Calvin Coolidge had been the first president to make a public radio address, President Obama is on LinkedIn; and while Social Security was introduced by President Roosevelt, under President Obama it still exists. But in a far more egregious example, they incorrectly added to President Ronald Reagan's biography:

"In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule."

This is not only a complete fabrication of what President Reagan said (even The Washington Post's 'fact checker' gave this familiar line two Pinocchios) but it is also a glaring example of the President putting himself ahead of the sacred institution he is sworn to protect for the nation as well as his predecessors and successors.

Heritage Distinguished Fellow Ed Meese who served as President Reagan's Attorney General said: "They should not use the biographies of past presidents as campaign vehicles. What they have done is to spoil the integrity of the historical narrative. At the very least, the Reagan biography should be restored to the accurate version provided White House Historical Association. I'm sure those associated with other past presidents would feel the same."

This is not the first time the Obama White House has engaged in this behavior. In March 2009, they were caught editingPresident Bush's biography to soften his listed accomplishments. They quickly reversed course. In the Bush Administration, biographies were directly supplied by the White House Historical Association without addendums or qualifiers.

Former White House Internet Director David Almacy explained to The Heritage Foundation that under Bush, this editing practice would have been unthinkable, saying: "It was our intent to preserve the history of the White House as an institution as well as those who served as president from a non-partisan historical perspective." Almacy added: "It was ingrained in Bush Administration staffers from day one that our time in service to our nation was a privilege and that we must separate political promotion from the institution as a whole."

Affirming that culture, President Bush told a group of departing staffers in 2009: "Laura and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts for serving with us. I've had two great chiefs of staff, Andy and Josh. Their task was to assemble, and I would say this objectively, the finest group of people to serve our country, all of whom are here not to serve me, not to serve Republicans, but to serve the United States of America."

This bipartisan approach evades the current White House. On April 20, President Obama's campaign team released a Nixonian enemies list of Republican donors on their "Truth Team" website. This wasn't about transparency, but intimidation. After each donor name, the Obama team highlighted why they felt the person was "less than reputable." Essentially the person had either succeeded in a business field that was counter to the President's worldview (i.e. oil production) or they made business decisions like outsourcing.

Prominent donors are often thrust into the spotlight in political campaigns, but this example was extraordinary and unprecedented. The writing was on the wall: If you give to an opposing cause, we will unleash a grassroots effort to destroy your personal reputation. This message delivered on behalf of the most powerful man in the nation has real implications. If the IRS were to audit one of these individuals, how could they not wonder if their political contribution was the root cause?

Following up on the story, the Wall Street Journal's Kimberly Strassel found that a week after this list was released, a political opposition researcher was found to be digging through divorce records of one of the men named. The target, Frank VanderSloot, told Strassel: "When I first learned that President Obama's campaign had singled me out on his 'enemies list,' I knew it was like taping a target on my back...[but] the public beatings and false accusations that followed are no deterrent. These tactics will not work in America."

Between the biographical trickery and their enemies list, President Obama's team has engaged in tactics that put their boss above his predecessors and dangerously above his opponents. This is indeed a culture that emanates from the top.

Just last week President Obama told ABC News' Robin Robertsin an interview: "When I think about -- those soldiers or airmen or marines or -- sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf..." My behalf.

Then there was also the consistent use of the pronoun "I" to describe the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. And the time, President Obama told 60 Minutes that he was our fourth greatest president ever, saying: "I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

Finally, President Obama insinuated yesterday that if you don't support his policies, it's not due to philosophical differences, but because of his name. Answering a question on The Viewabout tight polls, he said: "When your name is Barack Obama, it's always going to be tight. Barack Hussein Obama."

Any person selected to the highest office in the land is bound to indulge a small degree of narcissism. But when it permeates the entire attitude and culture of the executive branch, it begins to become a problem. No president is larger than the presidency.

REPORT FROM HORIZON LINES INC. -

These ongoing investments in new equipment and operational improvements by Horizon Lines continue to make a significant impact on the quality and reliability of service available to U.S. shippers in the Hawaii trade.

"Our service linking the mainland and Hawaii is a lifeline to the island economy and we take this responsibility very seriously," said Ali Nikkhoo, Vice President and General Manager, Hawaii. "In particular, shippers of perishables require the latest equipment to ensure they deliver the freshest quality products to the Hawaii consumer. This is why we have made a big investment in the new equipment and are excited to deploy the reefer containers for our customers."

Horizon Lines' refrigerated container program includes several design enhancements developed by the company's commercial and engineering teams. The new containers include enhanced insulation and stronger floors that improve operating efficiency and durability. Each container is equipped with a new style of door lock seal, and the cooling unit itself is bolted into place with a wire-seal to detect unauthorized access. These advancements make the containers more secure to handle high-value perishable inventory.

Horizon Lines, Inc. is one of the nation's leading domestic ocean shipping companies and the only ocean cargo carrier serving all three noncontiguous domestic markets of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico from the continental United States.  The company maintains a fleet of 15 fully Jones Act qualified vessels and operates five port terminals in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  A trusted partner for many of the nation's leading retailers, manufacturers and U.S. government agencies, Horizon Lines provides reliable transportation services that leverage its unique combination of ocean transportation and inland distribution capabilities to deliver goods that are vital to the prosperity of the markets it serves. The company is based in Charlotte, NC, and its stock trades on the over-the-counter market under the symbol HRZL.

The May 8, 2012 document entitled Internal Memo, covers such topics as why the rail should be built; whether it will reduce traffic; whether the city can afford to build, operate and maintain the system; whether the rail will be on budget; why the city is requesting an additional $450 million in commercial paper from the city council; the benefits of rail; why there aren't more seats on the rail; and why people should support the project, even if it does not go to their community.

(See the memo here: InformationonRail-05-08-2012)

Council Budget Chair Ann Kobayashi questioned why the administration is distributing the memo to city employees when the rail project is already underway. She also questioned the facts in the memo and the cost to taxpayers to prepare the extensive report.

City Spokesperson Louise Kim McCoy said the Q&A was done at no extra cost by HART staff to provide information to some frequently asked questions.

"Many of our city employees requested the information from HART so that they can answer questions as they arise," McCoy said.

She said Wayne Miyashiro, an employee at the Department of Planning and Permitting, distributed the memo to city employees in his department.

Honolulu Transportation Expert Cliff Slater, who runs HonoluluTraffic.com and is one of 7 plaintiffs challenging the validity of the rail project's Environmental Impact Statement in federal court, said there are several inaccuracies in the memo.

For example, the city claims in the memo “it will take 40,000 vehicle trips off our congested roads and highways each weekday.”

Slater countered: "That sounds good. However, Table 3-12 in the Final EIS shows that if the City doesn’t build rail, population growth would add 525,000 cars to the road. If it does build rail, population growth less the minor effect from rail, would still add 476,000 cars to the road. So, in round numbers, it means we would have a half million more car trips every day whether we build rail or not ! Some benefit for spending $5.2 billion (and counting)."

"Put another way. the increase in automobile trips with the rail project compared to today will be a 21 percent increase. The increase under the "No-Build" projection, that is if we do nothing, is 23 percent (nobody is suggesting we do nothing). In short, we get 21 percent more autos on the road with rail and 23 percent without it. Some benefit for $5.2 billion (and counting)."

The memo said “Commuters taking rail will have zero congestion”: 

Slater said: "Tell that to the 80 percent of rail commuters who will be standing in “crush” mode for as long as 40 minutes from East Kapolei to Downtown."

The city claimed: “it will be less expensive to maintain and operate a combination rail-bus system than an all-bus system.”

Slater said operations do not cover the capital costs. "You cannot ignore the huge capital costs and the ongoing refurbishing and replacement costs," Slater said.

The city said: “Freeing buses from routes that the train will serve will allow the city to redirect those buses…”

Slater said: "They don’t tell you they plan of discontinuing express bus routes many of which will get commuters to work faster than the train with all its bus/rail/bus hassle."

The city claimed a number of rail construction projects have come in on time and on budget:

Slater said: "That’s just not true when you compare the final costs compared with the Final EIS projection. Of the four we were able to check against the official FTA appraisal. Three were over budget, St. Louis Metrolink +34%, Salt Lake City +21%, Denver +12 percent, Dallas -3.9 percent."

City officials claimed: The rail system will be "green," reducing Oahu's dependence on fossil fuels. 

Slater countered: "This is grossly misleading since they are not comparing the likely usage of suburb-oriented rail lines such as ours would be with TheBus actual energy use. TheBus is one of the most efficient bus systems in the nation and would use less than half the energy per passenger mile as rail. Even autos use less energy per passenger mile than trains."

The city reports: There is also the potential for new investments totaling billions of dollars near rail stations, or transit-oriented development, which could include affordable housing, commercial centers and recreation areas. As other cities have seen, these developments can boost our local economy on a sustainable basis. Transit-oriented development encourages livable, walkable communities and promotes healthier lifestyles.

Slater said: "This is total guff, properly called Developer Oriented Transit. They do not tell you that all these TODs are subsidized thus incurring a heavier load of taxes for existing homeowners. Everyone who is pro TODs should be forced to visit some of them."

The city officials said: “there are successful new rail projects in areas with populations fewer than 900,000.”

Slater said: "The federal government compares contiguous urban areas known as MSAs. On that basis we are the 56^th in size in the country and most of them that are larger than us do not have rail lines."

University of Hawaii Engineering Professor Panos Prevedouros also noted there are a number of inaccurate claims in the city memo, which he called "city propaganda to its employees."

For example, the city said "Finmeccanica, the parent company of AnsladoBreda [that won the bid to build the Honolulu trains] remains financially solid."

Prevedouros said:  "Two facts that speak to the quality of info disseminated by the City:  (1) Finmeccanica has been downgraded to a low status: Moody's downgrades Finmeccanica to Baa2 and  (2) When Ansaldo was awarded the contract Finmeccanica traded at over 8 euro.  Throughout 2012 it's been trading under 4 euro and recent stock price is near 2.5 euro."

McCoy didn't address questions about the accuracy of the memo, but said it will be posted on the city rail authority's web site.

Aaron Torres

Torres, the “Hawaii Five-0” crew member who died February 20 while being restrained by police at his Nanakuli home.

“In my opinion, this 37-year-old man died as a result of asphyxiation during restraint by police officers when they were laying on the decedent while he was in a prone position and struggling during cocaine induced excited delirium,” Dr. Kanthi De Alwis wrote.

De Alwis, a forensic pathologist, found numerous abrasions and contusions on Torres’ head, face, arms and legs but no injuries to the neck or throat.

In a “brief history” of the case, De Alwis wrote that Torres “was placed in a prone position on a dirt driveway while he was kicking and trying to get up when officers restrained him by laying on him trying to handcuff him.

“It was estimated that in about two to three minutes he became unresponsive,” De Alwis wrote.

Michael Green, an attorney representing Torres’ estate, said that account does not square with what family members said they witnessed.

“It sounds like it was based just on the police version of events,” said Green.

Torres’ wife and brother said the confrontation between Torres and three police officers lasted anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, according to Green.

One officer was on the back of Torres’s legs, while another held his arms and a third had an arm around Torres’ neck, according to Green.

De Alwis’ history of the incident said police did not use “vascular neck restraints, pepper spray or taser” against the unarmed Torres.

De Alwis reported finding three right rib fractures and a fracture of the sternum in the middle of the chest, which may have occurred during cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

She also found a chest contusion “consistent with” CPR as well as a wrist contusion “consistent with an impression of the handcuffs.”

Torres was 5'4" tall and weighed 178 pounds, according to the report.

There was cocaine in his bloodstream and Torres had a "history of chronic cocaine abuse," De Alwis said.

Police have declined to comment on the status of an internal affairs investigation into how Torres died and were unavailable for comment late this afternoon on the contents of the autopsy report.

From Jaffa, the Tel Aviv skyline spreads northward in a series of independent municipalities along the beach-lined Mediterranean coast.

Traveling With History  :  

C 1850. From Jaffa looking north toward the sand dunes that would become Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv:  Facing the Future With a Different Take on the Past   

©  pictures and text, Allan Seiden, 2012

It was on a sunny day in 1909, with Palestine a province of the Ottoman Empire, that a group of Jewish residents of the ancient port city of Jaffa, feeling at risk after anti-Jewish riots, bought twelve acres of land on the sand dunes north of Jaffa. Drawing lots for building sites, they established a community that several years later would be called Tel

1909: Tel Aviv is founded on 12-acres of sand dunes bought from Palestinian Arabs.

Aviv, tel Hebrew for a manmade hill and aviv for spring, the season of regeneration, symbolic of the return of the Jews to their ancient homeland. 

Those pursuing  this goal were Zionists. Taking their name from the biblical reference to Israel, they came in many variations, some religious, some secular, some labor-oriented,  drawn from the intelligentsia, and the middle and working classes.

      The first Zionist communities were begun by  religious Jews in the 1880s and 1890s. They joined existing Jewish communities, some dating back to the middle ages. 

1895. Theodore Herzl. Born in Hungary, later settled in Vienna as a journalist. He successfully added a political agenda to a grassroots movement. In the Arab world, Zionism was considered unjust and a threat, a potential sharing or surrender of Islamic lands to the infidel.

Their settlements were largely communal, designed for self-reliance and as an expression of  spiritual truth. Political Zionism added a nationalist objective in restoring the Jews to their ancestral homeland. That was the message at the First Zionist Congress when it convened in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. Under the leadership of Theodore Herzl, a respected Viennese journalist, the Congress set its sights on restoring the Jews to what was  then an outlying  province of  the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman Palestine was a sparsely populated land that, under Ottoman rule, had been reduced to poverty and environmental destruction, hillsides denuded of their forests, the  desert encroaching on the land.  Other places as far afield as South America and West Africa had been proposed as a place for a Jewish homeland. In the 1920s, the Soviets had even established a vast Jewish Autonomous Region in the wilds of north-central Asia. Few Jews had gone to this  frontier. If there was to be a Jewish homeland,  Israel had history on its side. There are reasons that synagogues have always faced Jerusalem and why ancient prayers make Zion a place of yearning in both real and spiritual terms. 

      The Zionists who followed in the first decades of  the 20^th century  were largely secular in their Jewish orientation and politically socialist in their thinking. Many were middle class and well educated,  but there were also working class Zionists, members of popular progressive movements often allied with organized labor.  Sensing the gathering storm Zionists of all backgrounds  shared a common belief  that history repeatedly showed Jewish vulnerability in both the lands of Christendom and Islam, with death, forced conversion, and exile often the only options. In the 19th century a new word was added to anti-Semitic lexicon: pogrom.

C 1880. A hapless jew is dragged to his death in a pogrom in Russia. Tens of thousands were killed by mob violence that met with no police intervention.

These  state-sanctioned murder rampages against Jews swept eastern Europe into the early 20th century, with the death toll in the tens of thousands. 

1894. His sword broken, Captain Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason on trumped up charges, revealing the power of anti-Semitism even in egalitarian France. He suffered years in solitary confinement on Devil's Island of the South American coast before his conviction was reversed.

Then, in 1894 the Dreyfus Affair revealed a strong current of anti-Semitism, even in egalitarian France. By the 1930s, Germany's solution to the "Jewish problem" made it increasingly obvious that Europe was a dangerous place to be Jewish.  Sadly, the early Zionists had accurately read the signs of pending disaster. Hundreds of thousands fled overseas, with thousands heading to British-administered Palestine.

        Great Britain had been placed in charge of Palestine in 1920 by authority of the League of Nations, predecessor world body to the United Nations. Britain proved intermittently accommodating to the influx of Jews, perhaps in appreciati0n of the support of Jewish volunteer forces in overthrowing the Ottoman Turks in 1917, during World War I. That same year, the Balfour Declaration, issued by British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour, stated His Majesty's Government's support of a division of Palestine between Arabs and Jews. Balfour first declared the government's policy in a letter to Lord Rothschild relative to Zionist hopes. That policy would later be incorporated into the Sevres Peace Treaty ending the Allied war against Ottoman Turkey and into the terms establishing the British Mandate for Palestine. 

C.. 1925, Tel Aviv was called The White City, for the stone quarried for its Bauhaus-modern homes. Britain's policy of allowing jewish immigration, triggered a major building boom in Tel Aviv in the 1920s and '30s.

C. 1920. Land sale by Palestinian Arab to Jewish buyers. Efforts were made by Islamists to limit such sales, but by the 1930s, more than 25,000 acres had been bought from Arab sellers.

 This policy was vigorously protested by the PalestinianArabs, who did not look kindly on Zionist aspirations or recognize British authority and were not the least bit happy  replacing the Ottoman Turks with Christian Europeans as overlords. Anger led to intermittent Arab violence against Jews in the 1920s, with the 

 situati0n worsening in the 1930s as Jewish immigration increased and the Jewish population of Palestine grew to nearly 500,000.  These new new settlers were put on land bought from Palestinian Arab landowners, resulting in tenant farmers being evicted from lands they had worked. Palestinian Arab opposition

Grand Mufti Husseini of Jerusalem greets Heinrich Himmler. Husseini sought an alliance with the Nazis as a means of limiting Jewish emigration to Palestine.

1947. An unweildy division of Palestine as approved by the United Nations, with Jewish israel in light blue, Arab Palestine in darek blue.

hardened as did Jewish resistance, with para-military groups operating to protect Jewish neighborhoods and villages and fighting the British who, surrendering to Arab pressure, began to intercept Jewish

May 14, 1948. David Ben Gurion, soon to be Israel's first Prime Minister, reads the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Dizzengoff Mansion in Tel Aviv.l Tel Aviv would quickly outgrow Jaffa, evolving, after Israel’s

immigrants even as escape from Europe became a matter of life and death. With that in mind, Jewish para-military groups  formed, attacking the British and hostile Arabs. In time, as Arab opposition hardened and massacres of Jew occurred,  these groups went on the offensive.

After independence was declared in 1948, these once independent groups provided the core for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which were quickly challenged by the armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. The Israeli state declared by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948 was based on a plan approved by the United Nations the previous year that had been rejected by the U.N.'s

Arab states.  Within days. Israel was in a war of survival, one of many its fought in the dcades that have followed. 

     As a matter of perspective, tribal bad blood between Arabs and Jews goes back to biblical times, when these kindred Semitic peoples first became enemies as children of Abraham. As the Bible tells it, when Abraham's wife Sarah found herself unable to conceive a child with she offered her Egyptian slave, Hagar, as a surrogate, and Ismael is born

Hagar and Ishmael are sent away by Abraham as Sarah cradles her son Isaac in an engraving by Gustave Dore.

she offers her Egyptian slave, Hagar as a surrogate and Ishmael is born. Then Sarah, well beyond child-bearing years, miraculously conceived Isaac. Protective of Isaac when he is mocked by Ismael, Sarah has Hagar and Ismael sent away. Near death in the desert,  they are saved by godly intervention. Half-brothers Isaac and Ishmael would become the progenbitors of the Jews and the Arabs.

       Mohammed  had dealings with Jews living in Arabia, and developed a certain antipathy when they refused to acknowledge him as a prophet, siding with Mohammed's enemies when war engulfed Arabia. So it was that the Jews would receive mixed reviews in the Koran, considered a benighted people  for their failure to accept Islam as the fulfillment of Jewish and Christian theologies. So it is that long memories lead to nearly impossible solutions in the Middle East.  

                                                                                                     *******

A Russian-born holocaust survivor, now an Israeli mother and grandmother. Although metropolitan Tel Aviv is more than 90% Jewish, that doesn't mean homogenity. The cultural differences between Jews of different backgrounds have dramatically eased with the second and third native-born generations.

From the beginning, Tel Aviv was to be a Jewish city, but that didn’t mean a second Jerusalem. The secular Zionists accepted the humanist and moral realities at the foundation of Judaism, but rejected the deity and the strict and formalistic detail of rabbinic Judaism. The secular Zionists sought to create a Jewish nation, an ingathering of exiles providing a safe haven for Jews who

An Ethiopian Jewish girl, on a school outing to Jaffa.

were marginalized, mistreated, expelled, murdered or forced to convert in both Christian Europe and in the Muslim lands of north Africa and west Asia. Institutionalized  persecution was the order of the day, although there were exceptions...places like medieval Muslim Spain and the Catholic Italian states in the early Middle Ages, where Jews flourished. The overall picture was far less enlightened or ecumenical.These were Jews who rejected this past as a path to the future, who rejected victimization as the Jews ultimate fate. They would build a city that was progressive in its plan, modern in its architectural outlook, and philosophically liberal. As the Jewish population grew, so did Tel Aviv, which came to be called the White City, not only in reference to the quarried stone used for its Bauhaus buildings, but for the enlightened ideal for which it stood. 

The Israeli-born son of Yemenite refugees perpetuates a tradition Yemenite Jewish art, working in silver at a Jaffa workshop & gallery.

The municipality of Tel Aviv/Yafo lies at the center of a far larger metropolitan area, home to 3.3-million people, 92% of whom are Jewish., compared to Jerusalem's 68%. That doesn't mean homogeneous, however, with European, Asian and African Jews, all part of the eclectic mixture that adds a cosmopolitan flavor to the city.

 While the Palestinian mainstream

1895. Three Jews in Jerusalem. Jewish communities remained in Palestine even after the Roman exile and existed throughout Islamic and Christian times, although Jewish communities were often at risk and were whole communities massacred more than once.

was largely Muslim Arab, even before the Zionist return to Israel there were Jewish communities were to be found in Safed, Tiberius, Hebron, Jerusalem, Acre,  and Jaffa. Established communities were sometimes supplemented by those seeking to reconnect to their ancestral homeland.  

          Since founding in 1948, Tel Aviv has grown to become the country’s commercial, financial, cultural, and creative capital, and a Mediterranean resort that comes to life during the hedonistic summer months. My winter visit saw only brave surfers in wetsuits braving temperatures in the 50s. As Israel’s creative hub, Tel Aviv is home to world-class cultural institution like the Israel Philharmonic, Batsheva  Dance Troupe, Habonim Theater, and the Israel Museum. Galleries and shops in the vicinity of Rothschild Blvd. reveal the hip, sometimes-iconoclastic creativity that defines Tel Aviv. 

Israeli fashions are featured at Tel Aviv's many fashion-focused shops in Jaffa along Rothschild Blvd..

that defines Tel Aviv.

The Azrieli Center is the heart of Tel Aviv's business district.

Innovation also comes in Tel Aviv’s role as the nation’s financial capital, funding the innovative companies that have seen Israel emerge at the highest  technological levels in medicine, agriculture, and computer science.

While Jerusalem remained the symbolic heart of Israel reborn, it was in Tel Aviv that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s iconic founding father, declared the founding of the State of Israel on May 14,1948 from Independence Hall (then the Dizzengoff mansion, now a museum) on Rothschild Blvd, one of the city's nicest commercial promenades.

Tel Aviv proved the entrepreneurial city that would provide Israel with a high-tech place in the world economy. The boom is evident in the dozens of highrise buildings that are now an integral part of the cityscape, and a fly-over as you arrive or leave, reveals the lateral extent of the city’s 25-mile-long stretch of the Mediterranean coast, spreading inland for miles before surrendering to lushly green farmland and pasture.

TRAVELING WITH HISTORY

Jaffa in the mid-1500s was still an important Mediterranean port.

***  Jaffa

Dusk descends and the night lights of Jaffa shine in distinctive silhouette.

Jaffa a part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, offers Tel Aviv’s most ethnically mixed neighborhood, a mix of Arabs and Jews that has the look of the Middle East. Whereas Tel Aviv is new, Jaffa’s history as a Mediterranean trading port dates back to the times of pharonic Egypt, imperial Rome, Muslim and Crusader invaders. From 1614 through 1917, when the Ottoman Turks governed Palestine, Jaffa’s importance as a port declined, only to be overwhelmed by the emergence of Tel Aviv. The Jaffa Museum, on the site of an archeological, provides a multi-media account of that history.

An Arab bakery: Fresh-baked in a timeless fashion.

Jaffa's relaxed pace and low-rise scale attracts Tel Avivans on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

Today’s Jaffa is an eclectic blend, part flea market, part artsy, with a casual mix of galleries, cafes and restaurants in a cityscape of narrow streets and winding

alleys, where a timeless Arab  bakery is neighbor to a gallery featuring Yemenite silver jewelry or a coffee shop hosting Tel Aviv "expats" enjoying the fascinating mix of people that add diverse authenticity to the passing scene.

Rome and Egypt meet in ancient Jaffa.

From Jaffa’s hilltop lookout, highrise Tel Aviv spreads north in a beachside assault of hotels and apartments. The tallest highrises are in the commercial part of the city, inland by a mile or two, with the Azrieli Center towers topping out at 614- feet.

***   Bauhaus Tel Aviv/ Neve Tzedek

Much remains of early Tel Aviv: Enough, in fact, to gain the city recognition as a World Heritage Site, admired for the world’s greatest concentration of Bauhaus architecture,

Minimalist geometry defines the Bauhaus style, with Tel Aviv offering the world's greatest concentration of Bauhaus architecture.

the decidedly simple, minimalist style spawned in the 1920s and ‘30s in modernist contrast to the elaborate detail and soft-curving flourishes of Art Deco and Art Nouveau design. Suited to the setting and the climate, it was familiar to those ex-Europeans then building homes and businesses in Tel Aviv. While some homes lie in the shadow of sky-scrapping highrises, much of Bauhaus Tel Aviv survives along Rothschild Blvd., Montefiore, Ahad, Haam, and Melchett streets. Using stylistically geometric flow rather than ornamentation, the look defines what was progressive and modern in the 1920s and 1930s when Tel Aviv began to grow. Today, shops, galleries, restaurants, and clubs (straight and gay) are part of the Bauhaus district scene.The eclectic style that competed with Bauhaus can be best seen in Neve Tzedek.

**   Independence Hall 

     Exhibits detail the dramatic events leading to and following Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. Ties in with a Bauhaus district visit.

***   Tel Aviv Museum of Art

Innovative architecture sets things in motion at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, one of the city's many cultural institutions.

       Permanent collections of Israeli art and a plentiful schedule of special exhibits make a visit worth considering.

***   Beth Hatfutsoth

The Museum of the Diaspora tells the story of far-flung Jewish communities around the world, supplemented by historic and contemporary exhibits.

***  Azrieli Observatory

Tel Aviv, the White City from the Azrieli Observatory, 600-feet above the city.

Unobstructed panoramas from one Israel’s tallest buildings, with audio guide to the city below included with admission.

*** Akko

The well-preserved, masterfully restored great vaulted gallery is part of what makes the Crusader city of Akko, a World Heritage Site.

Make a day trip to Akko, a 75-minute train ride north of Tel Aviv. As the best-preserved Crusader port, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The remains of its medieval Crusader past were inadvertently preserved when they were filled in and built over after the Muslim reconquest in the late 12^th century. A medieval synagogue, Turkish bath, a large caravansary, and a winding maze of streets and alleyways, make it a great place to wander , with hand-made jewelry a specialty of Akko shops, with a number of restaurants to choose from.

*** Caesarea

A portion of the beachside aqueduct that carried water from the mountains to this coastal port and administrative headquarters of Roman Palestine.

Built by King Herod to curry favor with his Roman overlords, it was a Roman city that became headquarters for the Roman administration after the defeat of the Jews in 70. The ruins of the beachside city, about 45 freeway minutes north of Tel Aviv, include the aqueduct, port, and medieval city walls, with a restaurant on site.

The freeway north from Tel Aviv toward Caesarea and Akko.

USEFUL CONTACTS

Israel Ministry of Tourism   www.goisrael.com

Israeli-grown persimmons and other fresh fruits at a Tel Aviv market.

Sunset at Caesarea, where expansive sand dunes face the Mediterranean.

Israeli Museums: www.wikipedia.com

Tel Aviv: www.telaviv.com

Hand of Fatima, an eve-rpresent gift theme at Jaffa's market..

NEXT    

A single camel makes its was across the Negev's stark eastern terrain..

Traveling With History    The Negev: The Desert & the Deep Blue Sea

The mountains of Jordan reflected in the Dead Sea's dense waters.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie with State Budget & Finance Director Kalbert Young (photo by Mel Ah Ching Productions)

The Governor will be visiting family in New York State during this time.

Lt. Governor Brian Schatz will be Acting Governor for the duration of Governor Abercrombie’s absence.



On Friday, May 18, 2012, Lt. Governor Schatz will travel to Taiwan and Korea where he will meet with officials, including the president of Taiwan, to promote tourism in Hawai'i and sign a Memorandum of Understanding on energy cooperation.

In January 2012, Governor Abercrombie assigned Lt. Governor Schatz to head an aggressive energy initiative for the State of Hawai'i that includes seeking national and international partnerships.

Lt. Governor Schatz departs on Friday morning at which time Attorney General David Louie will serve as Acting Governor until Governor Abercrombie returns from his trip at 5:30 p.m.

“The chance to elect a United States Senator from Hawaii happens on average once every 25 years. Let’s make the most of this once in a quarter of a century opportunity.”

Lingle, who will likely challenge either Congress member Mazie Hirono or former Congressman Ed Case in the General Election, reminded Republicans she faced a similar challenge in the 2002 governor’s election.

“Let’s come together once again to make history like we did 10 years ago when I beat Mazie the first time,” Lingle said. “I am confident that this is a winnable race. But it sure won’t be easy.”

Hawaii is one of the bluest states in the nation, with Democrats holding all four Congressional seats, all but nine seats in the 76- member Legislature, and the governor’s seat. With President Barack Obama up for re-election, political observers expect Democrats will have a higher than normal turnout to support Obama, who spent his childhood here.

Lingle has focused her political messaging in this U.S. Senate campaign on her “bipartisanship” and noted that when she was a Republican governor with a Democratically controlled state legislature, they were able to work together.

She said bipartisanship is important in Congress, which is bitterly divided along philosophical and party lines.

“I don’t understand both political parties - here at home and in Washington – who oppose bipartisanship, compromise and collaboration. I don’t understand them because the problems we face are not Democrat problems, they are not Republican problems, they are American problems and we will have to come together to solve them. This is what the people of Hawaii expect and this is what the people all across America expect,” Lingle said.

“If the American people approve of the bickering and the partisanship going on in Washington dc, then the rating of the approval of our Congress would be 90 percent, not 9 percent as they have today,” she added.

Lingle, who has been consistent in her bipartisan messaging in her commercials and press releases, said the person serving in a bipartisan fashion “does not mean going whichever way the wind blows.”

“Compromise and collaboration, does not mean turning away from liberty, limited government, individual responsibility, fiscal accountability, and equality of opportunity,” Lingle said. “In fact, I believe these are same values shared by almost everyone in the state of Hawaii.”

Charles Djou, who served in Congress in 2010 for 6 months after a special election, and then lost to then Senate President Colleen Hanabusa in the 2010 General Election, is challenging Hanabusa again for that seat.

Lingle said she and Djou have talked a great deal about what it would take to win their respective races. Besides a solid track record, platform, and committee campaign team; positive messaging; and successful fundraising, Lingle said they need a party that is united and committed to victory.

She asked the 302 Republicans at the event to make a commitment to Republican candidates and people of Hawaii so they can elect a more balanced government that works in a bipartisan fashion.

Djou, who has served in the Honolulu City Council, Hawaii State Legislature and Congress, and is also in the U.S, Army Reserve, shared some of his stories from his recent deployment in Afghanistan. He is the only member of Congress to be deployed to the Middle East, and said he had previously voted on funding for the operation while in Washington DC. His comments focused on fixing Washington politics.

“I am here to tell all of you that we can change things. We do not have to accept the status quo. We do not have to accept a government that does not function or work. We do not have to accept a Congress that is so bitter, that is divisive, that it cannot get anything done. We know this,” Djou said.

Djou said his six month deployment into one of the most dangerous regions in the world helped him not only understand the evil we face, and the heroics of America’s armed forces, but also allowed him to put politics into perspective.

“I am also here to tell you that as difficult as the problems are that our nation faces, they are not as difficult as facing down the Taliban intent on doing pure evil. And as difficult as the solutions are to fixing, our nation’s problems, as challenging as they may be, they are not as challenging as what we have asked our service members to do in Afghanistan. …. It is important for us to fight and not accept anything less for our nation,” Djou said.

Hawaii legislators, including Senate Minority Leader Sam Slom, House Minority Leader Gene Ward, Rep. George Fontaine and Rep. Gil Riviere shared insight and highlights from the legislative session that ended May 3.

They noted Republicans helped kill several bills that would have hurt Hawaii’s precious environment by fast tracking the city’s planned rail project and other government projects.

There are several interesting candidates running as Republicans this year who participated in the “parade of (60) candidates.”

They include two beauty queens: Miss Hawaii 2012 Lauren Cheape who is running for a new House seat in Mililani, and Tiffany Au, the 2012 Narcissus Queen who is running for a new House seat in downtown Honolulu.

Marissa Capeluto, an immigrant from the Philippines who has become a successful and outspoken Oahu businesswoman, and Navy veteran and business consultant Matt Digeronimo, who is running for the second Congressional seat, also participated in the parade.

The Republicans hold their state conventions every year and alternate between Oahu and a neighbor island, with Oahu always the site during the election year.

The turnout this year is one of the lowest Oahu totals in recent years, and party members offer several reasons.

First, the party’s annual major fundraiser, the Lincoln Day Dinner, usually held in conjunction with Lincoln’s birthday in February, was not held until April 20, 2012. The delay came because of party in-fighting that resulted in the ouster of then party chair, Jonah Kaauwai, who parenthetically was never mentioned at this convention.

However the dispute and delay resulted in Republicans having to pay a minimum of $150 to attend the April 20^th event and then a minimum of $140 just three weeks later to register for the convention. Neighbor islanders had the additional expense of record high interisland airfares and pricey hotel rates at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Second, there were a number of Republicans who are weary of the infighting that has taken place, not only for the chairmanship, but for the post of national committeeman.

Former State Senator and former Party Chairman John Carroll, who is challenging Lingle, was frustrated by the party’s unwillingness to allow him to speak and Lingle’s unwillingness to accept a primary election debate.

In addition, there are no well-known Republican contenders for the Second Congressional District seat and the lack of outside speakers also lessened the draw.

The applause and passion for Lingle was markedly subdued compared to her previous runs and part of that can be attributed to her message of bipartisanship, which did not resonate uniformly with all Republican delegates and candidates at the convention.

In January, Ted Liu, Lingle’s former director of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, defeated long time party activist and former party chair Willes Lee in a contested 31-30 state central committee election for national committee chairman.

Lee, the former party chair, challenged Liu again during the convention. There were a great deal of critical emails circulating during both of their campaigns and Republicans said it got downright nasty at times. Both sides were firmly entrenched and it became a referendum on party insiders versus many regular delegates.

Several minutes before the scheduled 2 pm. election process, a rumor circulated that if Lee won, new young state chairman and Lingle protégé David Chang would resign. During the nomination process for Liu, Chang’s finance and a vice-chairman of the party Beth Fukumoto broke down in tears in her advocacy for Liu.

Minority Senate Leader, Sam Slom, who spoke on behalf of Lee, said in more than 40 years of attending Republican conventions, he never saw two candidates slug it out more for a position that pays nothing and requires them to pay a considerable sum of their own money to serve the party.

In the end, Liu triumphed by 32 votes. Miriam Hellrich, who has served for more than a decade as national committeewoman, faced no opposition and was elected by acclamation.

Hawaii Democrats will hold their convention in two weeks.

See related videos:

BY SYDNEY ROSS SINGER

When we think of conservation, we are supposed to have a warm fuzzy feeling that we are protecting animals, plants, and special places from people.  People are apparently the bad guys, and saving nature means getting rid of the people – even if they have lived there for centuries.

The indigenous peoples of Hawaii are now being threatened by conservation.  Hunting and gathering has been practiced in Hawaii for generations as a necessary part of survival.  Now, the Hawaii government is planning the eradication of the wild food animals and the plants that feed them, all in the name of conservation.

Hundreds of thousands of acres of Hawaii’s public lands have already been fenced off from public use.  Only scientists and government workers have unlimited access to these areas.  Eight foot high fences keep out hikers, bird watchers, nature enthusiasts, hunters, and gatherers.  Meanwhile, nonnative plants and animals are being poisoned, shot, trapped, and eradicated.

Apparently, the wild sheep, goats, pigs, deer, and cattle are no longer considered food but “invasive species”.  The fruit trees and vines, such as strawberry guava and banana poka (a type of passion fruit), which feed the wildlife and people, are also considered “invasive”.  As a result, the people who have relied on these food resources for generations are in trouble.

Many of these people are of Hawaiian ancestry.  Many are not.  All share the common culture of hunting and gathering.  And now,  faced with declining wild food resources and an ever rising cost of living, they are finding it too expensive to live in Hawaii any longer.

Recent headlines announced the increased exodus of local residents to the Mainland.  They are being chased away in part by government conservation policies that place nature above people, trying to erase centuries of food species introductions that have been sustaining the local culture.

Why kill wild foods, especially when the Hawaii government advocates for food self-sufficiency for our island residents?  Perhaps it's because the hunting and gathering culture, like the so-called “invasive species” on which they survive, is no longer welcome in the Aloha State.

Conflict between indigenous peoples and conservation is a longtime problem.   According to Dr. Peter Kareiva, head scientist for the Nature Conservancy, one of the biggest threats to indigenous peoples around the world is conservation and the removal of people from the land on which they live.

Here is some history.  (References at the end.)

Yosemite was occupied by Miwok Indians growing crops, white settlers raising sheep, and miners seeking gold and other minerals. Not long after John Muir, head of the Sierra Club, built himself a cabin and a water-powered mill he decided the other occupants had to go.  Muir vigorously backed the expulsion of the Miwok.  The Yosemite model spread to other national parks, including Yellowstone, where the forced evictions killed 300 Shoshone Indians in one day.

In 2009, journalist Mark Dowie published Conservation Refugees, which estimated, "About half the land selected for protection by the global conservation establishment over the past century was either occupied or regularly used by indigenous peoples. In the Americas that number is over 80 percent."

Estimates vary from five million people displaced over the last century by conservation to tens of millions, with one Cornell University professor estimating that 14 million individuals have been displaced by conservation in Africa alone.

According to Kareiva, “In the early 1990s, indigenous groups spoke out against these evictions at various forums, including at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio. As a result, conservation groups pledged to respect and work with the communities living in or around protected areas...But by 2004, the conflicts had only increased. That spring, the International Forum on Indigenous Mapping resulted in a declaration signed by all 200 delegates that the "activities of conservation organizations now represent the single biggest threat to the integrity of indigenous lands."”

However, not all the people of Hawaii are buying their tickets to the Mainland just yet.  They are preparing to legally fight for their land.  The Pele Defense Fund (PDF) is raising $40,000 for a class action lawsuit to save the wild for the people, and preserve the hunting and gathering lifestyle that is the peoples' right.

According to Palikapu Dedman, President of the PDF, “All funds received by hunters  and supporters will go to immediate use for a retainer or down payment  to the attorney who will file a class action law suit to stop immediate  fencing and eradication  of deer,  sheep, goats, pigs and cattle on DLNR lands including NARS (Natural Area Reserve System) areas. We feel there is strong evidence of traditional and customary practices that have been grossly neglected in the designated fence lands to date, including Department  of Hawaiian  Home Lands. These funds will be kept in a litigation account with PDF and only used as such. Let’s all stand together and protect the resources and life style of our island for our keiki's future. Hunting and gathering are the same.  It is not just a right but our responsibility.”

Pele Defense Fund can be reached at:

P.O Box 4969

Hilo, Hawai'i  96724

peledefensefund@gmail.com

(808) 315-9996

References:

1. Kareiva, P., Lalasz, R., and Marvier, M., “Conservation in the Anthropocene” Breakthrough Journal, No. 2, Fall, 2011.http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/debates/anthropocene-revisited.shtml

2. Dowie, Mark. 2009. "Conservation: Indigenous People's Enemy No. 1?" Mother Jones, November 25.  http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/11/conservation-indigenous-peoples-enemy-no-1

3. Agrawal, A., and K. Redford. 2009. "Conservation and displacement: An overview." Conservation and Society 7(1): 1.

4. Dowie, M. 2009. Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples. Boston: MIT Press. 12.

5. Ibid.

6. Dowie, Mark. 2005. "Conservation Refugees." Orion, November/December 2005.http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/161/

7. Emerton, L. 1999. "Balancing the Opportunity Costs of Wildlife Conservation for Communities Around Lake Mburo National Park, Uganda." Evaluating Eden Series discussion paper prepared for the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

8. Curran, L.M. et al. 2004. "Lowland forest loss in protected areas of Indonesian Borneo." Science 303 (5660): 1000-3; Naughton-Treves, L., Holland, M.B. and K. Brandon. 2005. "The Role of Protected Areas in Conserving Biodiversity and Sustaining Local Livelihoods." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30 (1): 219-252.

Aaron Torres

asphyxiated by police at his Nanakuli home in February and was in a “cocaine-induced excited delirium” when he died, according to the City Medical Examiner’s office.

Aaron “Spydah” Torres, 37, died of “mechanical asphyxia during police restraint” Feb. 20 and his body showed a “history of cocaine abuse,” the office said.

The Medical Examiner said the manner of Torres’ death was “homicide” and police are conducting an internal affairs investigation to determine if the use of lethal force against him was justified.

An attorney representing the Torres family, Michael Green, said the investigation could result in criminal charges against the officers involved.

“Citizens are not supposed to die in this type of confrontation,” said Green.

Police declined comment on the investigation.

The slightly built Torres  -- he was 5’6” tall and weighed 160 pounds -- was unarmed and held face-down on the ground outside his house by three police officers during a confrontation that lasted anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes, according to family members who watched the incident in horror, said Green.

Torres’ wife Michele and brother Brian were among the witnesses, Green said.

“The family of this young man were just beside themselves when they watched the barrage on this young man until he died,” said Green.

“People (were) screaming out to stop, leave him alone and don’t do that,” Green said witnesses told him.

One officer held the back of Torres’ legs, another held his hands behind his back and a third had his arm around Torre’s neck, witnesses told Green.

“He’s not one of these guys who’s 6 feet four, 350 pounds. He was a little guy. And there were at least three police officers there for a long time,” said Green.

“These officers are trained to be able, within a minute or two, to take a suspect, even a much larger suspect, and reduce that person to a point where they can’t fight back,” said Green.

The full results of an autopsy of Torres have not been released because of the ongoing HPD investigation of the circumstances surrounding his death.

Officers went to Torres’ Kaukai Road home following a series of early morning telephone calls between Torres and emergency 911 operators.

After a first brief call from Torres to police at 4:27 a.m. ended abruptly, a police dispatcher called Torres back and asked him if he needed assistance.

“Yeah, help…help…help, please,” Torres said.

Teamsters driver Michael Gueso, who works on the Five-0 show, said last week that all he and other crew members know about the case is that Torres was alive when police arrived at the home and was dead when they left.

“We don’t know if we’re ever going to find out what really happened. It’s a sad situation,” he said.

Shortly after Torres died, police said he had been restrained to prevent him from harming himself.

“That should take 15 seconds,” said Green. “It happens all the time. They’re trained to do that. For this to go on so long, either their training was substandard… or they just reacted in a way where a young man lost his life.”

Torres was one of two transportation captains on the Five-0 television series, which just completed its second season on the CBS network.

Captains oversee the movement of a wide and expensive array of trucks, vans, trailers and specialty equipment used on a network television series like Hawaii Five-0.

Torres had a minor criminal record, with convictions for misdemeanor assault and three petty misdemeanors offenses.

See Related Story

The Hawaii Five-0 show is no exception:

• Two Five-0 drivers are on federal parole after serving five-year prison terms in separate methamphetamine distribution cases.
• The man hired to replace Torres as a transportation captain has been convicted of drug dealing and assault.
• A past business associate of Torres, George Cambra Jr., worked as a Five-0 driver last year while awaiting trial on drug-related forgery and theft charges.

The CBS network, which produces Hawaii Five-0 through a subsidiary called Eye Productions, Inc., declined to comment when asked if it checks the criminal histories or conducts drug tests of crew and cast members.

Hawaii Five-0 star Alex O’Laughlin left the show for three weeks while it was in production here this season, reportedly for treatment of pain medication dependence.

The production was shut down for two weeks and O’Laughlin was absent from one episode.

George Cambra Jr. was sentenced in June 2011 to a five-year state probation term after entering a deferred guilty plea in his criminal case in January 2011.

He has been jailed twice for refusing a urinalysis test and missing meetings with his probation officer.

George Cambra Jr.

Cambra is in jail now awaiting a court hearing on a motion to modify or revoke the terms of his probation.

Cambra forged checks and stole cash from his family’s company, George Cambra Movie Production Trucks, Inc., admitting to police that he used the money to finance a drug habit.

Waianae farm land owned by Aaron Torres’ family was used as a storage yard for vehicles and equipment owned by the Cambra company until city inspectors cited the family in 2005 for violating agricultural zoning restrictions on the property, according to public records.

Cambra and his father have been directly or indirectly linked to three of the most notorious criminal cases in recent Hawaii history.

• George Cambra Sr., served a federal prison sentence for conspiring with fellow Teamster movie driver Joseph “Joe Boy” Tavares in 1997 to set fire to film and television production vehicles owned by competitors of the Cambra company.
• The elder Cambra and Tavares accused each other of involvement in the 1994 waterfront murder of movie vehicle owner David Walden, although each denied the allegations. No one was ever charged in the murder and the case is unsolved.

Walden was shot to death by two men on a motorcycle while he waited for a business appointment with three Teamster movie drivers.

• George Cambra Jr. admitted in federal court testimony in 2009 that he helped to destroy firearms used in the 2004 organized crime murders of two men at the City’s Pali municipal golf course.

Nationally, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has been under a federal court order for 21 years requiring the union to cooperate with and pay for investigations of any ties to organized crime or labor racketeering.

The probes are conducted by what is called the Internal Review Board, based in New York City, that has previously brought charges against Teamsters members for illegal activities connected to film and television productions in several locations around the country.

The IRB has never brought charges against Teamsters in Hawaii.

Ed Case

BY CONGRESSMAN ED CASE (D-HAWAII 2002-2007) - Audrey and I are just back from a great four days talking story across Hawai'i Island. It's crystal clear that folks on my home island, like the rest of us, want strong, effective leadership that'll fix DC and get our economy and country moving forward again.

With just three months now to the August 11th primary, my opponent's endgame is also crystal clear. We've already seen Part I: to run from any real debates or other joint appearances where more than a handful of voters can size us up side by side and decide which of us can get the job done.

Part II's starting very soon: to unleash a flood of paid infomercials and attack ads throughout the media. The goal is simple: hide Mazie behind a carefully scripted and one-way smokescreen and hope voters buy it.

That's not how a U. S. Senator can act in DC and not how a U. S. Senator should act at home. But beyond that, who's really paying for all this, what do they want, and who'll fight for us?

Let's follow the money. Here are the facts:

Special interest PACs and other political committees. These mostly DC status quo defenders have contributed about $700,000 to Mazie and $10,000 to me in this race. Over our congressional careers fully 31% of Mazie's contrbutions (almost $1.9 million) have come from PACs compared with only 8% of mine.

Mainland money. Fully 64% of all of Mazie's PAC and "itemized" (over $200) contributions in this race have come from mainland donors, while 75% of mine have come from Hawai'i. (Candidates don't report the names and addresses of donors of $200 or less, but if we count those my Hawai'i contribution portion is higher.)

Here's the bottom line: whatever Mazie and her handlers say (and just yesterday one attacked "mainland special interest" money flowing into Hawai'i), Mazie's infomercials and other endgame efforts will be bought and paid for in large part by mainland special interest money that expects everything in return and cares little for Hawai'i. That won't produce a Senator willing and able to fix DC and fight for Hawai'i first in the Senate.

courtesy blog.nielsen.com

REPORT FROM GASBUDDIES.COM - May 14- Average retail gasoline prices in Honolulu have fallen 1.3 cents per gallon in the past week, averaging $4.39/g yesterday. This compares with the national average that has fallen 3.3 cents per gallon in the last week to $3.73/g, according to gasoline price website HonoluluGasPrices.com.

Including the change in gas prices in Honolulu during the past week, prices yesterday were 8.2 cents per gallon higher than the same day one year ago and are 7.8 cents per gallon lower than a month ago. The national average has decreased 16.5 cents per gallon during the last month and stands 20.3 cents per gallon lower than this day one year ago.

"While gasoline prices east of the Rockies have been falling, the West Coast remains at the mercy of refinery production," said GasBuddy.com Senior Petroleum Analyst Patrick DeHaan. "The entire West Coast right now is looking for any reason for a continuation in the price rally we've seen in the last week as supply remains tight, and stakes high as Memorial Day weekend is just two weeks away. While pump prices may continue their decline outside the West Coast, any refinery blip certainly has the potential for localized hotspots, and motorists should be aware of that," DeHaan said.

About HonoluluGasPrices.com: GasBuddy operates HonoluluGasPrices.com and over 250 similar websites that track gasoline prices at over 140,000 gasoline stations in the United States and Canada. In addition, GasBuddy offers a free smartphone app which has been downloaded over 20 million times to help motorists find gasoline prices in their area.

Meanwhile, CBS earlier announced that Hawaii 5-0, also filmed in Hawaii, will be renewed for another season.

Some other television shows filmed outside of Hawaii that fans may want to know about (Source: Ibtimes.com)

CANCELLED SHOWS 2012:

ABC: Extreme Makeover, Home Edition; GCB; Man Up; Missing; Pan Am; The River; Work It.

CBS: A Gifted Man; CSI Miami; How to Be a Gentleman; NYC 22; Rob; Unforgettable.

CW: H8R; One Tree Hill; Remodeled; Ringer; The Secret Circle.

FOX: Alcatraz; Allen Gregory; Breaking In; House; I Hate My Teenage Daughter; Napoleon Dynamite; Terra Nova.

NBC: Are You There, Chelsea?; Awake; Bent; Chuck (two-hour season finale airs January 27, 2013); Free Agents; Harry's Law; The Playboy Club; Prime Suspect; The Firm.

RENEWED SHOWS 2012:

ABC: The Bachelor; The Bachelorette; Body of Proof (13 episodes); Castle; Dancing With The Stars; Don't Trust the B--- In Apt. 23; Gray's Anatomy; Happy Endings; Last Man Standing; The Middle; Modern Family; Once Upon a Time; Private Practice (13 episodes, final season); Revenge; Scandal; Shark Tank; Suburgatory; Cougar Town (renewed by TBS, will move in Fall 2012)

CBS: 2 Broke Girls; The Amazing Race; The Big Bang Theory; Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds; CSI (the original); CSI New York; The Good Wife; Hawaii 5-O; How I Met Your Mother; The Mentalist; Mike & Molly; NCIS and NCIS Los Angeles; Person of Interest; Survivor; Two and a Half Men; Undercover Boss.

CW: 90210; America's Next Top Model; Gossip Girt; Hart of Dixie; Nikita; Supernatural; The Vampire Diaries.

FOX: American Dad and Family Guy (full season, starting early 2013); American Idol; Bob's Burgers; Bones; Fringe; Glee; Kitchen Nightmares; New Girl; Raising Hope; The Simpsons (renewed for 2013 and 2014); Touch; The X Factor; The Cleveland Show (13 episodes).

NBC: 30 Rock (final season, 13 episodes); Betty White's Off Their Rockers; The Biggest Loser (midseasonstart ); Celebrity Apprentice; Fashion Star; Grimm, Law and Order SVU; The Office; Parenthood; Parks and Recreation; Smash (bumped to mid-season with 18 episodes); Up All Night; The Voice (will run in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013); Whitney and Community (moving to Friday, 8 p.m.); Rock Center with Brian Williams (moving to Thursday, 10 p.m.)

USS Carl Vinson

The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) and embarked Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 17 will arrive at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam on May 15 for a scheduled port visit.

Vinson is currently transiting to her homeport in San Diego following a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific and Middle East areas supporting maritime theater security operations with the U.S. 7th and 5th Fleets.

"The dedication demonstrated by every Sailor up and down the chain of command was the key factor in accomplishing every mission objective for our time in the 5th and 7th Fleets," said Vinson's Commanding Officer Capt. Kent D. Whalen. "With our return to 3rd Fleet, our focus may have changed but our mission-ready mindset continues."

Vinson serves as the flagship for Carrier Strike Group (CSG) 1, led by Rear Adm. T.K. Shannon, which also consists of Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 1 guided-missile destroyer USS Halsey (DDG 97), guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG 52), and CVW-17.

Carl Vinson will be greeted by family and friends as they prepare to embark for a "tiger cruise" for their departure back home to their homeport of San Diego.

For more information check out the ship's website: http://www.cvn70.navy.mil/

Submitted by the public affairs office

Photo: Emily Metcalf

REPORT FROM THE HAWAII TOURISM AUTHORITY —The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA), the state’s tourism agency, will release a written fixed price request for proposals (RFP) from qualified applicants to provide Europe Leisure Tourism Destination Representation Services (Solicitation No.: HTA-RFP-12-05 (RFP)) that drive incremental visitation and revenue for Hawai‘i from its Europe leisure major market area (U.K., Germany, Italy, France and Switzerland).

The RFP includes the following:

• Development and deployment of an annual tourism marketing plan that will increase leisure travelers and visitor expenditures for the Hawaiian Islands;
• Integration of activities with the travel trade (retail and wholesale) through multi-faceted, traditional and non-traditional means; and
• Development and facilitation of partnerships or other relationships with Hawai‘i’s visitor industry.

The offer determined to be the most advantageous to the HTA will be selected, taking into consideration multiple factors, including applicant qualifications, the merits of the proposed services, and price, in accordance with the RFP evaluation criteria.

The desired date to award a contract under this RFP is Aug. 1, 2012. The period of performance under the new contract runs from Aug. 1, 2012 through Dec. 31, 2014, with optional renewals for three (3) one-year periods.

The written proposals are due no later than June 18, 2012 at 4:30 p.m., HAST (Hawai‘i-Aleutian Standard Time) and in the manner described in the RFP.

Beginning Monday, May 14, 2012, the RFP is available at the HTA office located at the Hawai‘i Convention Center, First Level, 1801 Kalākaua Avenue, Honolulu, Hawai‘i 96815 during normal business hours, or can be downloaded at www.hawaiitourismauthority.org (click the link to “Request for Proposals”).  Inquiries regarding this RFP shall be directed to the HTA Procurement Officer, Winfred Pong, at: (808) 973-2255, or e-mail:  wpong@hawaiitourismauthority.org.

Established in 1998, the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, the state’s tourism agency, is responsible for strategically managing tourism to optimize benefits for Hawai‘i that integrates the interest of visitors, the community and visitor industry. Tourism is our state’s leading economic driver and largest employer and the HTA continually works to ensure its sustainability well into the future.

For more information on the HTA, please visit www.hawaiitourismauthority.org, find us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter (@HawaiiHTA).

REPORT FROM U.S. SENATOR DANIEL INOUYE'S OFFICE

The money comes from a grant administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The project will enhance efforts to reduce and document human disturbance of monk seals and sea turtles caused by growing numbers of beach goers and inshore recreational fishers on Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, and Hawaii island.

The project will establish the States first Marine Protected Species (MPS) program for the long-term conservation and management of monk seals and sea turtles.

The work will include developing and delivering public education products and activities. Outreach efforts will be designed to enhance public knowledge of "seal-friendly" and "turtle-friendly" ocean recreation and fishing practices.

The work will also entail direct intervention at popular beaches and fishing areas.

"Protecting the monk seal, the most endangered fin-footed marine mammal in U.S. waters, the green sea turtle and the hawksbill turtle will require a concerted effort by all who use the ocean.  The alleged killing of four monk seals during the last six months highlights the immediate need for a combination of intervention and culturally sensitive education and outreach.  This grant will continue the process of correcting misinformation about the monk seal while also addressing the challenges facing the green sea and hawksbill turtles.  We must be diligent stewards of the ocean and I am very pleased the administration recognizes the need to invest in the protection of these marine animals,” said Senator Inouye.

“The monk seal and honu are among Hawaii's most treasured native species.  We must do all we can to protect these important marine animals so that our keiki and future generations can learn from and enjoy them like we do,” said Senator Akaka.

Linda Lingle announces candidacy for U.S. Senate (Photo by Dave Livingston)

REPORT FROM LINDA LINGLE'S US SENATE CAMPAIGN - They sniff out bombs, patrol dangerous explosive zones, and put themselves in harm's way to protect our soldiers. Yet military working dogs are currently classified as "equipment" by the Pentagon and are sometimes left behind and forgotten.

Specialist Alex Hernandez III, 21, a Round Rock, Texas native, served as a Door Gunner with 3rd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment, 25th Combat Aviation Brigade, 25th Infantry Division.
Spc. Hernandez joined the Army July 8, 2009 as a Test Equipment Operator and attended Basic Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  He joined the 25th CAB in October 2010.

His qualifications include Combatives Level One and the Combat Life Savers Course.

Spc. Hernandez's awards and decorations include the National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Overseas Service Ribbon, NATO Medal, and an Aviator Badge.

Spc. Hernandez is survived by his wife Tyasia Pompy.

Submitted by David M. Bolender, Major, AD, Deputy Division Public Affairs Officer, 25th Infantry Division, Schofield Barracks, HI

Pierre Omidyar, founder and chairman, eBay, and founder, Omidyar Fellows

The Omidyar Fellows program was launched today by the newly created Hawai'i Leadership Forum. Omidyar Fellows offers selected participants a rigorous, comprehensive leadership development curriculum designed to equip and inspire emerging leaders with the skills needed to affect positive, lasting change in Hawai'i.

“We created this resource as a tool to remind licensees and their employees about the importance of following the laws and rules when it comes to selling and serving liquor in licensed establishments,” said Greg Nishioka, the HLC’s administrator. “It provides answers to many of the frequently asked questions about the requirements for our weekly server training classes. We also plan to have it translated into a few other languages such as Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese and potentially others.”

Topics covered by the brochure include: a listing of documents to bring when registering for a liquor card; registration fees; server training class dates and times; liquor law citations; and HLC contact numbers. In addition, the brochure includes various reminders about citations, prohibitions, servicing, liquor purchasing laws, employees and more.

The Honolulu Liquor Commission regulates and enforces state and county laws regarding the manufacture, importation, sale and consumption of intoxicating liquors in Honolulu. For more information about the Commission, please visit www.honolulu.gov/liq

DOH issued a Notice of Violation and Order against Koyo for utilizing an unapproved manufacturing process for its bottled water from July 7, 2006 to May 19, 2011.  Koyo is required to adhere to a specific process in making bottled water from the ocean.  Koyo’s product is branded as Mahalo Hawai‘i Deep Sea and has been marketed to consumers in Japan, Hawai‘i and elsewhere.

No recall or embargo of the Koyo bottled water product was initiated by DOH.  Test results from independent laboratories and the state laboratory confirmed that consumption of the affected bottled water product did not pose an immediate and/or substantial risk to human health. Koyo performed a disinfection process prior to their water product being sold.

“The Koyo company staff and leadership have been cooperative in correcting the unpermitted drinking water filtration process,” said Gary Gill, Deputy Director for Environmental Health.  “The settlement payments are being dedicated to support the department’s drinking water, food safety and laboratory programs.”

Koyo remains permitted by the DOH to filter ocean water at its Kona facility and produce a bottled drinking water product.

The DOH Food and Drug Branch protects public health by ensuring food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices and related consumer products within the state are safe, effective and properly labeled.  The DOH Safe Drinking Water Branch monitors drinking water quality and regulates water systems throughout the islands. The state laboratory tests water and food for contamination and performs a wide range of public health support functions.  These programs and others within the department work together to ensure the health and safety of the people of Hawai‘i.

The new MCBH complex will be used as the command operations facility, air passenger terminal, and cargo terminal.  It also includes paving and site improvements associated with the new operations complex and supporting construction.  Construction is expected to begin in late 2012 and is expected to be completed by September 2014.

“dck pacific construction is proud to be a part of this project at MCAS” said Eric Tessem, Sr. VP/General Manager, “We have a strong team of personnel, designers and subcontractors, and we look forward to collaborating with NAVFAC Hawaii to ensure the success of this project.”

dck-ecc’s partnership combines the talents and resources of dck worldwide and ECC, and was created specifically to complete complex, large design-build projects in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific.  This award represents dck-ecc’s fourth win as a partnership. dck-ecc is currently constructing a $128 million contract for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers at South Range, Schofield Barracks, Oahu, Hawaii.

dck pacific construction, a dck worldwide company, has been a builder in Hawaii for over 73 years and, has completed numerous landmark federal projects in the Pacific.  They include the $330 million Hawaii Regional Security Operations Center at NCTAMS Pacific, the $85 million Pacific Command Headquarters at Camp Smith, and Joint Regional Command Marianas in Guam. Currently, dck pacific is constructing two projects at Pearl Harbor.

dck worldwide, LLC provides design-build, general construction, construction and program management, and project development services globally.  For more information please visit www.dckww.com.

Established in 1985, ECC provides a broad range of services to support their clients’ missions, including renewable energy, engineering, construction, design-build, environmental remediation, and munitions response services for Federal clients. ECC has been executing projects in the Pacific since 1995, and has performed more than 100 projects there over the past 16 years. For more information about ECC, please visitwww.ecc.net. ECC—Never Compromising Safety

Tom Berg - Photo: Emily Metcalf

REPORT FROM COUNCIL MEMBER TOM BERG - NOTE TO FDA FROM HONOLULU: LABEL FOODS GENETICALLY MODIFIED

There used to be a day when canned food and packaged produce lacked a listing of ingredients such as trans fats; dairy along with other perishables - were void of expiration dates; presence of allergens and additives, from artificial to all natural were omitted on the label; and now, pink slime in meat has the consumer wanting more protections. Our right to know has evolved to benefit the consumer, but the fight is not over and more needs to be done.

Take bread for example. Just last year, Ewa Beach Representative Kymberly Pine voted against your right to know if freshly baked bread should be identified separately from bread that was previously frozen and then sold as fresh. Her argument was that by putting a label on bread for the consumer to make an informed decision, such a mandate to label bread as previously frozen would hurt the economy, put people out of work, and make bread unaffordable whereby people would have to go without it to survive.

This same scare tactic is being used by numerous politicians to keep us from knowing what we are buying and subsequently eating when it comes to genetically modified or genetically engineered organisms (GMO) put in our food.

If you simply just want the right to know what is in your food, and you want government to mandate labeling laws to include GMO, I am proud to share with you that a big step in that direction happened right here on Oahu at the city council meeting on May 9.

The city council passed resolution 12-57 FD1 by a vote of 7 to 2 to urge the Federal Food and Drug Administration to let us know if GMO's are in our food.

TRAVELING PETTING ZOOS AND PONY RIDES

May 14, 2012In this MegaVote for Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District:

Recent Congressional Votes

• Senate: Judicial Confirmation
• Senate: Cloture Motion: Student Loan Interest Rates
• House: Suspension Vote: Export-Import Bank Reauthorization
• House: Suspension Vote: U.S.-Israel Cooperation
• House: Sequester Replacement
• House: Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations, FY 2013

Upcoming Congressional Bills

• Senate: Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012
• Senate: Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012
• House: Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2012
• House: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013

Recent Senate Votes

Judicial Confirmation - Vote Confirmed (91-3, 6 Not Voting)

The Senate confirmed the nomination of Jacqueline H. Nguyen of California to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sen. Daniel Inouye voted Not Voting......send e-mail or see bio

Sen. Daniel Akaka voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Cloture Motion: Student Loan Interest Rates - Vote Rejected (52-45, 1 Present, 2 Not Voting)

This bill would extend the current 3.4 percent interest rate on federally-subsidized Stafford loans to undergraduate students for one year. This extension would be paid for by eliminating a tax preference for certain shareholders of S-Corporations. The Senate failed to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to invoke cloture, and thereby end debate, on the motion to proceed to the bill. It is possible the Senate will hold another cloture vote on this bill. The House passed a competing version (H.R.4628) on April 27.

Sen. Daniel Inouye voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Sen. Daniel Akaka voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Recent House Votes

Suspension Vote: Export-Import Bank Reauthorization - Vote Passed (330-93, 8 Not Voting)

This bill would extend the charter of the Export-Import Bank of the United States through FY 2014. It would allow the bank's lending limit to rise incrementally to $140 billion (from $100 billion currently). HR 2072 passed under suspension of the rules, meaning the support of at least two thirds of all Members voting (in this case 282) is required for passage. The Senate will take up H.R.2072 on Monday, May 14, with a cloture vote scheduled.

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Rep. Mazie Hirono voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Suspension Vote: U.S.-Israel Cooperation - Vote Passed (411-2, 9 Present, 9 Not Voting)

This bill states that it shall be U.S. policy to deepen cooperation with Israel in a wide variety of areas, particularly regarding Israel’s "qualitative military edge" over regional rivals; to veto anti-Israel resolutions at the United Nations; and to assist Israel in ongoing negotiations on a two-state solution. The bill also extends U.S.-government-backed loan guarantees to Israel through FY 2015. HR 4133 passed under suspension of the rules, meaning the support of at least two thirds of all Members voting (in this case 276) is required for passage.

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Rep. Mazie Hirono voted YES......send e-mail or see bio

Sequester Replacement - Vote Passed (218-199, 1 Present, 13 Not Voting)

This bill cancels the automatic discretionary spending cuts instituted by last year's debt-ceiling agreement and replaces those cuts with a different set of reductions to a variety of mandatory spending programs, as well as a reduction on the overall spending limit for all FY 2013 appropriations bills. The bill separately eliminates the cap on defense spending instituted by the debt-limit agreement to accommodate a higher level of spending in that area. The Senate is unlikely to take up this bill. The President has issued a veto threat.

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa voted NO......send e-mail or see bio

Rep. Mazie Hirono voted NO......send e-mail or see bio

Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations, FY 2013 - Vote Passed (247-163, 21 Not Voting)

This appropriations bill provides $51.1 billion dollars in funding in FY 2013 for the departments of Commerce and Justice and other agencies such as NASA and the National Science Foundation. This funding level would be $1.8 billion less than in FY 2012 and $731 million less than the president requested for the upcoming fiscal year. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the bill on April 19, but floor time has not been scheduled. The President has threatened a veto on the House version.

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa voted NO......send e-mail or see bio

Rep. Mazie Hirono voted NO......send e-mail or see bio

Upcoming Votes

Export-Import Bank Reauthorization Act of 2012 - H.R.2072

The Senate is scheduled to hold a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to this House-passed bill.

Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012 - S.2343

The Senate will likely continue consideration of this bill, with another cloture vote possible.

Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2012 - H.R.4970

The House will take up a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which aims to foster cooperation among law enforcement, public health and other organizations in combating domestic violence and other crimes against women. The Senate passed its version on April 26.

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 - H.R.4310

The House aims to pass its version of the annual defense policy bill.

FORT SHAFTER FLATS, Hawaii - Sgt. 1st Class Dallas Pocaigue, 9th Mission Support Command noncommissioned officer of the year (center left), and Spc. Chung Lee, 9th MSC Soldier of the year (center right), proudly display their awards at the Pacific Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition awards ceremony, here, May 12. The awards were presented by Col. John Ellis, deputy commander, 9th MSC (far left), and Command Sgt. Maj. David Yamamoto, CSM, 9th MSC (far right). Pocaigue and Lee will go on to represent the 9th MSC in the Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition at Fort McCoy, Wis., scheduled for July.

By Sgt. Joseph Vine - FORT SHAFTER FLATS, Hawaii – The 9th Mission Support Command announced the Pacific Army Reserve Soldier and noncommissioned officer of the year during a ceremony, here, May 12.

The Soldier of the year title went to Spc. Chung Lee, a carpentry and masonry specialist with the 797^th Engineer Company, 411^th Engineer Battalion, 9^th MSC, who rose above the region’s top Army Reservists.

The hard-fought battle for NCO of the year went to Sgt. 1^st Class Dallas Pocaigue, a senior food service instructor with the 4960^th Multi-Functional Training Brigade, 9^th MSC.

The two Army Reservists each earned their respective title and an Army Achievement Medal after competing in a weeklong Best Warrior Competition that assessed their mental and physical prowess through a myriad of events to include weapons qualification, land navigation and hand-to-hand combat.

“I was really excited and surprised that I was picked,” said Pocaigue, a Hawaii resident and Guam native. “All the competitors worked equally hard, and it could have gone either way; anyone could have won.”

Lee, who finished first in a muddy, rain-soaked road march, said he was unsure he was going to win.

When Lee heard his name announced as the Soldier of the year, his jaw dropped.

“I was really surprised that I was selected as the best warrior,” he said.

Though there can only be two winners, Command Sgt. Major David Yamamoto, command sergeant major of the 9^th MSC, said all the Soldiers in the competition gave everything they had.

“When I look at these Soldiers, I see how much time and effort they put into [the competition]. It shows me they’re proud of themselves, they’re proud of their unit and proud of the Army,” said Yamamoto. “These Soldiers continue to exceed and raise the standard.”

Although the regional competition is complete the journey for these victors is not yet over.

From this point, Lee and Pocaigue will go on to represent the 9^th MSC at the U.S. Army Reserve BWC, scheduled for July 14-21, at Fort McCoy, Wis.

Both Soldiers said they will take their experience and lessons learned as they move on to the nationwide competition.

“I’m going to prepare for the next level by training a lot harder and a lot faster,” said Pocaigue. “We are going to go out there with a bang.”

Lee, a Guam resident, said he will also continue his training and is looking forward to the next challenge.

Report by Sgt. Joseph Vine, 305^th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment. The 9th Mission Support Command serves as the headquarters for all Army Reserve units and service members in the Pacific Theater. Its major subordinate units include the Theater Support Group; 100^th Battalion, 442^nd Infantry Regiment; the 322^nd Civil Affairs Brigade; the 303^rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade; and the 411^th Engineer Battalion. With units located in Guam, Saipan, Alaska, American Samoa, Hawaii, Japan and Korea, the 9^th MSC truly embodies the spirit of their motto: “Pride of the Pacific!”

Bob Marx

Bob Marx, Hilo attorney, bookstore owner, and candidate for Hawai‘i’s Second Congressional District, calls the Honolulu Rail Project an impossible financial burden on the entire state.

Speaking to a group of students in Pahoa today, Marx addressed the issue of the Honolulu rail project. “This is Mufi Hannemann’s pet project that he abandoned to run for governor, quite unsuccessfully I might add,” Marx began. “Now it appears another Honolulu politician, Tulsi Gabbard, has decided to take Mufi’s reigns and put the state deeper into financial crisis by supporting a $450,000,000 ‘paper’ loan,” Marx stated.

The original vote for the rail which passed in 2008 was for $3.7 billion and the rail was supposed to run from Kapolei to the University of Hawai‘i. Now, just the first step of the project will cost $5.3 billion, skip Salt Lake and not even get to the University.

“Gabbard continues to show her loyalty to the voters of the FIRST congressional district, which she rightfully should, as she represents many of them on the Honolulu Council. Gabbard and Mufi have no business running for a seat that encompasses the neighbor islands and should rightfully be running for the district in which they live. Both are asking Kaneohe, Kailua, Haleiwa, Wainae, Waimanalo, Makaha and the rest of rural Oahu to float the bill for this incredibly unpopular and untimely elevated train project,” Marx said, bluntly.

The city said they wouldn’t need the funds unless “the moon fell into the ocean.” Now, just a few months later, they are asking for these funds. “If this wasn’t serious business it would be laughable,” Marx quipped. “We still have the second highest per capita debt in the nation: $8000 for every man, woman and child living on the islands, and yet Honolulu wants to put us further in debt? I am happy to see Council Members Ann Kobayashi and Tom Berg opposing this impossible fiscal burden on the rest of the state.” Marx said.

Ka‘eo Malaka, a college student in Hilo, asked him what can be done to relieve the burden of traffic and congestion in Honolulu. “We can start with animproved bus system. We must prioritize support for the workers and those looking for work that don’t have transportation, not simply provide alternatives for those who do. This shouldn’t be about convenience--it should be about jobs--and this rail project does nothing to help traffic congestion in Honolulu or help people who are struggling with high fuel prices.”

Studies in cities with rail programs consistently show the same thing: when people are already using public transportation like buses, ride-shares, or light-rail, they become accustomed to not using their car and will jump on board a train. When they are not accustomed to using public transportation, the transition period is much longer and the costs and projected revenues take much longer than forecasts anticipated. The vote for the funding of the program is set for June 4^th.

The Second Congressional District encompasses most of rural Oahu and all the neighbor islands. Mr. Marx, a Hilo attorney and long-time community activist, is running against Oahu residents Mufi Hannemann, Tulsi Gabbard, and Esther Kia‘aina and for the open seat. Marx lives in the district and is the only Candidate in the race from a county other than Honolulu. 

This piece was submitted by the Bob Marx for Congress campaign

HAWAII STATE CAPITOL Photo: Emily Metcalf

BY LOWELL L. KALAPA - Hawaii taxpayers can breathe a sigh of relief as lawmakers turned out the lights on the 2012 session with no major tax increases approved or other types of revenue enhancements awaiting the governor’s approval.

After all, this is an election year with every lawmaker up for reelection as a result of the reapportionment of the legislative districts, an issue that has yet to be resolved.  Since no incumbent lawmaker is willing to face the wrath of a disgruntled electorate, lawmakers tended to shy away from any hint of a tax increase.  Indeed the electorate is growing more and more sensitive to the rising burden of taxes and fees of the past few years as lawmakers attempted to balance the state’s budget on the backs of taxpayers.

While the budget crisis was certainly a result of the sluggish economy and the worldwide recession, there is no doubt that Hawaii, like many of its sister states, created problems over the past twenty-five years by allowing the growth in government to go unchecked, adding this and that program or new service to a palette that was already overburdened with a plethora of programs and services.

While many of those programs and services were added at the height of the economic boom of the later 1980’s and early 1990’s, one would have thought that lawmakers would have tightened the fiscal purse strings when Hawaii hit the first brick wall in the mid 1990’s.  Unable to suck the fiscal gut in, lawmakers found society unwilling to pay for the increased costs.

Instead, lawmakers resorted to raiding special funds that they had set up to hide excess tax revenues that they refused to return to taxpayers.  As a result, programs which should have been dumped and special funds which should have been repealed were instead installed as permanent features of the state spending agenda.  It didn’t matter that many of these programs and services had been at one time provided by private providers when the community got together and did for itself.

This created an entitlement mentality with taxpayers believing that if they were paying so much in taxes, government ought to do more for them.  Little did taxpayers realize that the burden was growing heavier and heavier and little did lawmakers understand that the more taxes and fees they levied, the less money there is to circulate in the economy.  Because of the panoply of taxes and fees, the cost of doing business has risen which in turn increased the cost of living in Hawaii.

As a result, with more and more of the household budget being spent on the more expensive necessities, there are less and less discretionary resources to buy extras.  Voila, a downward spin in the economic activity as consumers tighten their belts as they try to make ends meet.  Meanwhile government bureaucrats decry the loss of funding as revenues shrink and they mumble that they can’t do their jobs because there are so many vacancies in their departments.

They believe that if they can prove that the public is not being served because they are understaffed, lawmakers will give them more money either in appropriations from the general fund or new fees and user charges so they can ignore the whims of lawmakers.

Such was the case during this past session as various department heads came before lawmakers pleading for new sources of revenues so they could “free-up” general fund dollars.  One example was the parking program for the disabled which asked lawmakers to add “another” dollar on the state vehicle registration fee because it would free up a half million dollars of general funds which is currently required to run the program.

ZOT, wrong request as lawmakers are still smarting from the complaints from constituents that the ten-dollar increase in the vehicle registration adopted last session was just too much of an increase!  And when it was pointed out that there are more than a million vehicles registered in the state, the proposed dollar increase would just double the budget of the program.

Some have argued that if government doesn’t provide a service or program, no one will.  The problem with that notion is that when government undertakes a program or service, it usually comes at a cost greater than if the same service was provided by private industry.  A good example is the lack of modernizing the information systems of state government, a project that is yet to be implemented despite the findings and recommendations of the state auditor.

Because media can be sliced so thinly these days, the Obama Is A White Guy campaign will be able to avoid communicating this message to the people who now think he is black enough.  "Forward" will take a look at a future where everyone can claim they are white, because no one will actually be white.

The Obama family will be positioned as the first integrated family to run for the Presidency.  Instead of television advertising, the first integrated family to run for the Presidency will have the first political reality show.  The opportunities are endless.  The Obamas will be shown telling their children why white and black people are different.  Mrs. Obama will serve collard greens and grits, and the President will be responsible for picking up the Big Macs and Fries when she is not cooking.  Mrs. Obama will have her own hoodie line and the President will have his Member's Only jacket.

Flashbacks to Obama's childhood will be filled with pictures of white people with tans as good as Barry's, body surfing at Sandy Beach and hanging out at "The Chink Store," a pre-7-11 type store popular with Punahou kids in days gone by.  (For real, this is a reality show).  Myriad photos will be shown, with his white grandfather Stanley Dunham and his white grandmother, Madelyn, who rose to be the first female vice president of the Bank of Hawai`i, which is Hawai`i's whitest bank.

Flashback footage of his  mother's time living at Mercer Island (one of the white-est places in the world) prior to her family's move to Hawai`i, where Stanley Ann (that was her name) met the black enough side of Barry, Barack Obama Senior.

Both Stanley Ann and Willard Mitt (and, come to think of it, Barack Hussein) have strange given names.  A good deal of time will be spent in debating just how these names shaped their lives.  Barry will muse that he was forced to run as a black man the first time:  otherwise, people would think he was an Arab.

Being white will put The President on equal footing in the race game with white man from Mexico, Willard Mitt Romney.  They will argue about who is whiter, both of them having gone to Harvard (Romney two times) , both of them having made a lot of money.  They will talk about their vacations in Hawai`i and France.  Obama will win the vacation run off, whiteys hating France the way they do.   Willard will argue vehemently about calling fried potatoes "freedom fries," their proper name.

So this November, prepare to face a run off between two white men.  One will trace his heritage to Mexico, the other to Kansas.  One will trace his wealth to family, the other will trace his wealth to composite girl friends and dreams of his father.  Both will have gone to private schools.  Both will have gone to elite Universities.  The choice will be tough.  They have a lot in common.

This guest editorial is filed under the humor section.

BY J.D. Tuccille - If the Transportation Security Administration is going to destroy expensive medical equipment and so infuriate airline passengers with intrusive faux security that they strip naked in protest, I think we have the right to demand that the agency do so efficiently. Gross incompetency and civil liberties violations really can be done on the cheap, you know. So, it's disappointing to peruse a report by Republican staffers from two key House committees detailing wasteful spending, unused and warehouse equipment, and amateurish efforts to dodge accountability by the TSA in the course of its efforts to pretend to protect us from bad guys.

Released Wednesday, Airport Insecurity: TSA’s Failure to Cost-Effectively Procure, Deploy and Warehouse its Screening Technologies (PDF), was compiled by the majority staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Among its findings is that the agency charged with making air travel (and so much more) such a hassle "is wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars by inefficiently deploying screening equipment and technology to commercial airports," and that, when the staffers came a-calling to see just what all this nifty and very expensive equipment was doing gathering dust, "TSA intentionally delayed Congressional oversight of the Transportation Logistics Center and provided inaccurate, incomplete, and potentially misleading information to Congress in order to conceal the agency’s continued mismanagement of warehouse operations."

Some highlights:

• Committee staff discovered that 85% of the approximately 5,700 major transportation security equipment currently warehoused at the TLC had been stored for longer than six months; 35% of the equipment had been stored for more than one year. One piece of equipment had been in storage more than six years – 60% of its useful life.
• As of February 2012, Committee staff discovered that TSA had 472 Advanced Technology 2 (AT2) carry-on baggage screening machines at the TLC and that more than 99% have remained in storage for more than nine months; 34% of AT2s have been stored for longer than one year.
• As of February 15, 2012, TSA possessed 1,462 [Explosive Trace Detectors] in storage in its TLC warehouses. At approximately $30,000 per ETD, TSA’s purchases equate to nearly $44 million dollars in excessive quantities of ETD machines.
• 492 of the ETDs had been in storage for longer than one year.

The report charges that TSA administrators tried to put off investigators when they inquired into the why and wherefore of all of that stockpiled equipment, but that they weren't even efficient about the coverup. "TSA willfully delayed Congressional oversight of the agency’s Transportation Logistics Center twice in a failed attempt to hide the disposal of approximately 1,300 pieces of screening equipment from its warehouses in Dallas, Texas, prior to the arrival of Congressional staff." In particular, "[d]uring interviews with TSA warehouse staff, Committee staff learned that TSA had disposed of almost 1,300 pieces of screening equipment ... the week of the warehouse visit and that the warehouse staff was actively removing the remainder of the equipment scheduled for disposition from the TLC the morning of the Congressional review." Investigators were actually told the warehouse crew had been working so hard to empty the place in advance of the visit that they'd been given the day off.

At only 22 pages, the report is worth a look, just for a glimpse at how your tax dollars are managed.

More of Reason's coverage of the TSA here.

John Stossel

BY JOHN STOSSEL - A child leaving home alone for the first time takes a risk. So does the entrepreneur who opens a new business. I no more want government to prevent us from doing these things than I want it to keep us in padded cells.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk. One person takes out a second mortgage to start a business. Another thinks that sounds nerve-racking, if not insane. Neither person is wrong. Government cannot know each person’s preferences, or odds of success.

Even if it did, what right does it have to tell them what to do?

As I document in my new book, No, They Can’t: Why Government Fails—but Individuals Succeed, when government gets in the business of deciding which risks are acceptable and which aren’t, nasty things happen.

This includes government’s attempt to improve life by regulating gambling and the use of medicine, banning recreational drugs and mandating safety devices in cars.

In what sense are we free if we can’t decide such things for ourselves?

Through the Food and Drug Administration, the government claims to protect us. But some people suffer because of that protection: Some die waiting for drugs to be approved.

Don’t we own our own bodies? Why, in a supposedly free country, do Americans, even when dying, meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices?

The Drug Enforcement Administration jails pain-management doctors who prescribe quantities of painkillers that the DEA considers “inappropriate.” It’s true that some people harm themselves with Vicodin and OxyContin, but it’s hard for doctors to separate “recreational” users from people really in pain. Some cancer patients need large amounts of painkillers.

After the DEA jailed doctors, some pain specialists began to underprescribe. The website of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warns doctors: Don’t go into pain management. “Drug agents now set medical standards. ... There could be years of harassment and legal fees.” Today, even old people in nursing homes sometimes don’t get pain relief they need.

Even the best safety regulations have unexpected costs. Seat belts save 15,000 lives a year, but it’s possible that they kill more people than they save.

University of Chicago economist Sam Peltzman argues that increased safety features on cars have the ironic effect of encouraging people to drive more recklessly. It’s called the Peltzman Effect—a variation on what insurance experts call “moral hazard.” Studies show that people drive faster when they are snugly enclosed in seat belts.

Also, while passengers were less likely to die, there were more accidents and more pedestrians were hit.

Perhaps the best safety device would be a spike mounted on the steering wheel—pointed right at the driver’s chest.

There’s another reason to think seat belt laws have been counterproductive. Before government made seat belts mandatory, several automakers offered them as options. Volvo ran ads touting seat belts, laminated glass, padded dashboards, etc., as the sort of things that responsible parents should want. I concede that government action expanded seat belt use faster than would have otherwise happened, but by interfering with the market, government also stifled innovation. That kills people.

Here’s my reasoning: The first government mandate created a standard for seat belts. That relieved auto companies of the need to compete on seat belt safety and comfort. Drivers and passengers haven’t benefitted from improvements competitive carmakers might have made.

If every auto company were trying to invent a better belt, today, instead of one seat belt, I bet there’d be six, and all would be better and more comfortable than today’s standard. Because they would be more comfortable, more passengers would wear them. Over time, the free market in seat belts would save more lives.

We don’t know what good things we might have if the heavy foot of government didn’t step in to limit our options.

In a free country, it should be up to adult individuals to make their own choices about risk. Patrick Henry didn’t say, “Give me safety, or give me death.” Liberty is what America is supposed to be about.

Let’s start treating people as though their bodies belong to them, not to a controlling and “protective” government.

John Stossel (read his Reason archive) is the host of Stossel, which airs Thursdays on the FOX Business Network at 9 pm ET and is rebroadcast on Saturdays and Sundays at 9pm & midnight ET. Go here for more info.

courtesy of Reason.com

BY Baylen Linnekin - The Farm Bill, that quintessentially quinquennial congressional replenishment of the pork trough from which many of America’s farmers indulge, is now upon us. Late last month the bill, dubbed the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012, cleared what will likely be its biggest hurdle when the bipartisan Senate Agriculture Committee voted 16-5 in its favor.

I’ll lead with the sliver of good news in the bill: Direct farm subsidies are on their way out. Subsidies are something many people—me included—have been attacking for years.

But what should be cause for celebration is instead just a case of shifting billions of taxpayer dollarsfrom one needless federal agricultural scam to another. For as billions in direct subsidies die a worthy death, bipartisan efforts in Congress (mainly via the powerful Senate Ag Committee) could hand farmers billions of new dollars in indirect subsidies—in the form of taxpayer-funded crop insurance.

Though crop insurance isn’t new, it’s ballooned in size recently as support for subsidies has waned. Critics of this sleight of hand come from all corners, and include Joel Salatin (as stated in my Reasoncolumn from last week), Bloomberg News, and the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

“A newly released report on subsidized federal revenue insurance for industrial crop farmers shows that the government has failed to control its costs and big insurance companies and agents continue to reap billions of dollars in windfall profits,” concludes economist Bruce Babcock of Iowa State University in a recent report commissioned by EWG, longtime critics of Farm Bill excesses. (EWG also boasts an incredibly thorough, well-maintained, accessible, and depressing online database of many of those excesses.)

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial recently referred to crop insurance as yet another congressional “boondoggle” that “throw[s] money at farmers, whether they need it or not.”

In additon to its cost overruns, bald waste, and corporate welfare, there's also a long history of fraudevident in the USDA crop insurance system.

So those are some of the problems with crop insurance. But what exactly is USDA crop insurance itself? Like most government schemes, it's really not just one program but is instead a boggling web of programs and offices.

According to USDA data, there are more than a dozen different types of crop insurance available for alitany of crops—from alfalfa seed to wheat. One program, Actual Production History, works like this:

The producer selects the amount of average yield to insure; from 50-75 percent (in some areas to 85 percent). The producer also selects the percent of the predicted price to insure; between 55 and 100 percent of the crop price established annually by RMA. If the harvested plus any appraised production is less than the yield insured, the producer is paid an indemnity based on the difference. Indemnities are calculated by multiplying this difference by the insured percentage of the price selected when crop insurance was purchased and by the insured share.

There are currently 15 USDA-authorized crop insurance providers around the country. The USDA refers to the subsidies it doles out to these crop insurance providers as “cooperative financial assistance agreements.”

But crop insurance doesn't end there. Even if a farmer opts not to buy USDA-subsidized insurance, that farmer might still be eligible for another form of USDA bailout. How’s that? Well, an uninsured farmer whose crops fail (or are never even planted) due to a drought, tornado, flood, or virtually any other natural disaster that leads the USDA to declare a crop disaster is eligible to receive a payout from various disaster-relief programs, including USDA’s Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program.

Crop insurance has its supporters no doubt. Last fall, as they geared up for consideration of the Farm Bill, a host of crop insurance supporters gathered at what the crop insurance industry lobby called “a crop insurance pep rally” to extol the virtues and sheer wonderfulness of taxpayer-supported insurance. And the Senate Ag Committee touts the “widespread praise” of the Farm Bill it passed from a variety of groups whose no-doubt tireless lobbying ensured the bill reflects the interests of them and their members.

The correct answer to the question of direct crop subsidies or crop insurance is a resounding “neither.” After all, an earlier study by Iowa State's Babcock suggested crop insurance is only about half as efficient as the crop subsidies they look set to replace. If crop insurance is an important element of farming, then let farmers buy such insurance on the open market—without taxpayer support—and, if need be, pass the costs on to consumers. That's something worth rallying behind.

Baylen J. Linnekin, a lawyer, is executive director of Keep Food Legal, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that advocates in favor of food freedom—the right to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, cook, eat, and drink the foods of our own choosing.

We’re No. 2! — Again

No. 2 in height in New York City, that is, ever since workers at One World Trade Center crafted a steel skeleton that took it past 381 meters (1,250 feet) into the sky on the last day of April.  That single tower replaces the trade center’s Twin Towers that fell in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

One World Trade Center as of January. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

And its steel beams in the sky put One World Trade Center a tad higher than the tippy-top of the Empire State Building, which had resumed its standing as New York’s Tallest when the Twin Towers collapsed.

One World Trade won’t be stopping there.  Cranes will eventually raise it to a symbolic 1,776 feet (541 meters), allowing it to reclaim the title as tallest building in all of America.  The symbolism derives from the year 1776, when the United States declared its independence.

But this is about the old, not the new, champion: the 81-year-old dowager high-rise.  On the affection meter, not just in New York but also nationwide, the Empire State Building ranks No. 1 by far.

The Empire State Building from ground level. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Five years ago, the American Institute of Architects marked its 150^th anniversary.  To celebrate, it invited Americans to choose their favorite building anywhere in the land — a steel tower, a beloved monument or memorial, a spectacular bridge, perhaps an iconic mansion.

The AIA announced the results on a Web site that showcased the top 150 structures in order of the esteem in which they are held.  I know about this because Carol photographed each one of them for the site.

The White House finished second.  The dramatic National Cathedral, also in Washington, placed third.  San Francisco’s photogenic Golden Gate Bridge came in fifth.

You can guess the winner:

From coast to coast and beyond, Americans picked the Empire State Building as their favorite structure in what architects call our “built environment.”

For once it wasn’t just New Yorkers — the ones who see nothing amiss in artist Saul Steinberg’s cover of the March 29, 1976 New Yorker magazine — who were bragging about their big building.  Steinberg’s cartoon is a map, of sorts — it shows New York City stretching four-fifths of the way across the country, with the Hudson River flowing roughly where the Rocky Mountains stand and only a bunch of buttes and a dot or two, marked “Nebraska” and such, from there to the Pacific Ocean.

Turns out, even people in Nebraska have a soft spot for the octogenarian New York skyscraper.

I was one of millions of American schoolchildren who’ve taken excursions or gone with family to New York City from the boonies.  Ohio, in my case.

I seem to remember this lovely painted-glass depiction of the Empire State tower in the lobby. (Carol M. Highsmith)

I’ve forgotten most details of the adventure except those involving the Empire State Building: gaping, slack-jawed in amazement, out the bus window from New Jersey at its domineering silhouette across the Hudson; standing beneath it; craning upward in wonder; riding what seemed like rocket-launched elevators to reach the observation deck nearly half a kilometer above Fifth Avenue.

And, of course, standing on top of the world, surveying what looked like Forever before me and “ants” far below.  Yellow Cab ants.  Bus ants. Tinier people ants.

For my VOA colleague Adam Phillips — a New Yorker who’s pleased to be working out of our New York Bureau — affection lingers for the brawny skyscraper.

He and his chums would ride up to the lookout platform, inside which he dimly recalls a packed “200-foot  lunch counter” — fond memories play tricks; 200 feet, or 70 meters, would be twice the length of a football field.  Ever the curious sort, Adam remembers peeking under the counter and beholding a “rainbow of colors” from the chewing gum that customers had stuck there.

This rouge compact was one of the early souvenirs sold to tourists at the building. (ljcybergal, Flickr Creative Commons)

He says he tossed a hat off the deck and soon lost sight of it as it looped to earth somewhere below.  With little regard for the consequences, he and his buddies mayhave sailed pennies into the wind — he ain’t sayin’, as New Yorkers would put it — wondering if it were true that they would land with such ferocity that they’d dig three meters into the earth.

I don’t recall ever seeing such ruts or the bodies of impaled passersby, so the danger of pennies from heaven was probably overrated.

“For New Yorkers, the Empire State Building has always had dramatic, masculine virtue,” Adam tells me.  “A swagger — quite the opposite of the delicate, crystal-champagne look of the Chrysler Building” a few blocks away.

Even more eloquently, Adam wrote for VOA about the Empire State Building on its 75^th anniversary in 2006:

Human societies have always built great monuments to celebrate their values. The Egyptians had their pyramids. Medieval Europeans had their great cathedrals. For 20th century Americans, it was the skyscraper that best embodied the power and progress that defined their era.

The art-deco spire of the rival Chrysler Building. (Carol M. Highsmith)

If it could talk, the Empire State Building would doubtlessly note that the Chrysler spire, its fierce old rival uptown, finished ninth on the AIA list of Americans’ favorite structures.  The previous skyscratching champion — the century-old Manhattan tower called the Woolworth Building — placed a paltry 44^th.  Two other lofty New York landmarks placed even farther down the list.   Rockefeller Center was 56^th; the well-known United Nations Building a distant 111^th.

Even Chicago’s Sears Tower, now called Willis Tower — the nation’s tallest structure when the AIA survey was conducted — finished only 42^nd in Americans’ regard.

Lumping these behemoths together brings to mind the frantic race for supremacy in the sky when they were created.  In 1913, F.W. Woolworth took some of the sizeable profits from his nationwide five-and-dime store chain and built the 241-meter (792-foot) Woolworth Building, which stood as the world’s tallest tower for more than a decade.

By 1932, a year after the Empire State Building rose, many skyscrapers, including the Chrysler ahead, had sprouted. (Library of Congress)

Then, thanks to engineering breakthroughs and a robust economy in the 1920s, two skyscrapers shot past Woolworth.  The race into the sky was on, thanks to Chicago architect William Jenney, who proved that a steel skeleton could support areally tall building.  Previously, masonry walls had to be thick and stout to bear the weight of several floors above them.  Seven or eight stories was about the max.

First, a Bank of Manhattan building at 40 Wall Street beat Woolworth.  Then William Van Alen, the architect of auto industry pioneer Walter Chrysler’s sleek new building uptown, pulled a sneaky trick that enabled it to reach a jaw-dropping 320 meters (1,050 feet):

Just as 40 Wall Street was prepping for its “World’s Tallest Building Raises the Stars & Stripes to the New York Heaven” ribbon-cutting ceremony, Van Alen’s crews at the Chrysler site were secretly building an altitude-busting spire — inside the structure itself as it rose.

Then they lifted and mounted the 27-ton steel tip without saying a word to the press.  Four days after 40 Wall Street threw its celebratory bash, Walter Chrysler calmly pointed out that his creation had bested the bank building by 30 meters.

The gloating did not last, though, for another automobile mogul, former General Motors executive John J. Raskob, outdid him in a, well, New York minute.  On the site of the renowned but fading Waldorf-Astoria Hotel — which he promptly razed while the hotel reopened elsewhere — Raskob and his investors thrust the Empire State Building into the sky at a rate of two floors a week.

The Empire State leviathan seen two years later, in 1934. (Library of Congress)

Making no secret of his desire to reach pinnacle status, Raskob is said to have asked his architect, William Lamb, “Bill, how high can you make it so that it won’t fall down?”

The answer was unreported, but the result was a masterpiece, 70 meters (200 feet) higher than Chrysler’s tower.

Raskob got his record, which the building would hold for 40 years.

Reading all this, you must think that the Empire State Building was a commercial palace: opulent, prestigious.

Not really.  It had the misfortune to open in 1931, just as the Great Depression was draining the life out of the nation.  Three-fourths of the Empire State Building’s offices went unoccupied, and the giant was soon mocked as the “Empty State” Building.  Not until the 1950s did the building turn its first profit.

The "Hatch Full-Fashioned Hosiery" office and showroom in the building in 1945. (Library of Congress)

And it was hardly luxuriant.  Picture one of those 1940s noir movies, in which a chain-smoking businessmen in a fedora hat walks down a dim, marble corridor, through a smoky-glass door, and into his tiny office.  Although the Empire State Building address was prestigious, the building was mostly home to small shops — diamond merchants, watchmakers, barber shops and the like — and nondescript wholesalers.

And it turned dingy as it wore out over the years.  In a $500-million renovation in 2006, its current owners spiffed up the fixtures and improved climate comforts.  And this year, they announced they were taking the building public with a stock offering that they hope will bring in as much as $1 billion in new capital to further enhance the landmark.

But people’s favorite stories about the Empire State Building have nothing to do with money, other than those pennies tossed to the wind.  Stories about:

In this publicity still, King Kong fends off biplanes. (AP Photo)

King Kong:  In 1931, the year that the building opened, the long-awaited movie from a popular book about a misunderstood giant ape hit the screen.  Audiences were mesmerized as the beast — having just escaped from captivity at a one-ape freak show — climbed all 102 stories to the top of a bad mock-up of the Empire State Building, where he swatted away buzzing biplanes before falling to his death in a hail of machine-gun fire.  There’s more, including Kong’s love-struck infatuation with a blonde played by Fay Wray, but it has little to do with the New York tower.

Dirigibles.  The art-deco spire of the Empire State Building was fancifully designed as a docking station for lighter-than-air ships at a time when they were the rage.  A famous photograph shows the cigar-shaped dirigible Los Angelesdocked nose-to-steeple there, but the photo was a fake.

A postcard view, doctored like the photo from which it was taken, of a docked dirigible. (Library of Congress)

No German Zeppelin or other airborne gasbag ever hooked up and sent passengers down a gangplank into the building, as planned.  A few floating airships approached for publicity shots but were so buffeted by high winds that the docking scheme was abandoned.

Plane crash.  This tale is true.  On a foggy Saturday morning in 1945, a B-25 bomber, piloted by an Army lieutenant, crashed into the north façade of the building, 79 stories up.  Fourteen people died, a dislodged engine landed on a roof far below, and the other engine and the plane’s landing gear ended up in an elevator shaft.  There, they severed the elevator cables and fell 75 stories down the shaft, along with the cab.  To her great misfortune and terror, operator Betty Lou Oliver was inside.  She somehow lived to tell about what still stands as the Guinness World Record for surviving an elevator fall.

The building itself “became a torch,” Jack Broad, who was at work there that day, told Adam Phillips years later.  “Gasoline ran down the side of the building.  As soon as it burned out, the building looked intact — except the plane was still sticking into it.”

The formidable anti-suicide barrier. (Mauropm, Flickr Creative Commons)

Suicides.  Thanks to a higher fence installed on the observation terrace in 1947, and a skirt of curled metal spikes around the perimeter, only an estimated 35 people have jumped to their deaths from the top of the Empire State Building.  Compare that with the more than 1,200 people known to have taken fatal plunges off the Golden Gate Bridge.

It seems odd, and a little macabre, to end this posting with another suicide anecdote, but I find this miraculous: In 1979, a woman named Elvita Adams leapt off the Empire State Building observation deck at the 86^th floor, only to be blown by a sudden gust of wind back through a window one floor below.  She sustained a broken hip and, one would hope, a different outlook on life.

Last year somewhere far off-off-off Broadway, someone turned that story into a one-man (yes, man) show.  It was called “I’ve Been Elvita Adams.”

Now that is macabre.

The Empire State Building at dusk, shot from the World Trade Center in the 1980s. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Ted's Wild Words

These are a few words from this posting that you may not know. Each time, I'll tell you a little about them and also place them into a cumulative archive of "Ted's Wild Words" in the right-hand column of the home page. Just click on it there, and if there's another word that you'd like me to explain, just ask!

Boonies. The sticks, remote parts where people aren’t very sophisticated. “Boonies” is short for “boondocks,” a Tagalog-language word that carries the same meaning.

Dowager. While the word literally applies to an elderly woman of high standing, it is often applied to once-glamorous, now fading buildings as well.

Five-and-Dime Store. A retail outlet found in almost every American town and city, especially in the mid-20th Century, in which prices were as low a nickel (five cents) and a dime (10 cents).

Gape. To stare in amazement, often with one’s mouth open.

New York Minute. An instant, or really, really quick. Faster than the New York cab driver behind you can honk his horn at you. That’s fast!

Octogenarian. A person in his or her 80s. The “octo” prefix also shows up in words such as octopus (eight legs) and the newer “octomom” — mother of eight.

--

This is a far-ranging exploration of American life by a veteran Voice of America “Americana” reporter and essayist.

Ted Landphair writes about the thousands of places he has visited and written about as a broadcaster and book author. Ted Landphair’s America often showcases the work of his wife and traveling companion, renowned American photographer Carol M. Highsmith.

Ted welcomes feedback, questions, and ideas.View Ted’s profile. Watch a video about Ted and Carol by VOA’s Nico Colombant.

In April of 1998, twins Lawrence and Lamont Garrison were about to graduate from Howard University in Washington.  Both worked at the U.S. Justice Department and planned to attend law school.  Then, they got the shock of their lives.

The man who had repaired their car a year earlier was indicted for cocaine and crack distribution. He told drug agents that the Garrisons had been involved in the drug conspiracy.

"They questioned me and showed me a picture of Tito Abea.  They said, 'Have you ever seen this guy?  And I said, 'Yes, he fixed my car,'" recalled Lawrence Garrison.

The Garrisons found themselves trapped on the darker side of federal laws that set mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, laws intended to make it easier to prosecute drug kingpins.

The garage owner faced a mandatory 10 years to life in prison.  The only way to reduce that sentence was to implicate someone else, the Garrisons.

Critics of mandatory sentences say that is a common practice in drug cases.  They also say the people implicated often have nothing to do with the crime.

"So they will give someone up.  Other times, people actually make up names, and say, 'Well, yes, so and so did this.  I saw him one time,'" explained Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimum Sentences.

Lamont Garrison remembers being offered the opportunity to reduce his time.

"They said, O.K. Mr. Garrison, this is your opportunity to help yourself.  'Well help myself?  How?  What do you mean?' 'Well you know what this is about you guys are doing XYZ, you got to tell us what you are doing,'" recalled Lamont Garrison.

The opportunity to reduce one's sentence can lead to innocents being fingered for crimes they didn't commit.

"They call it the best tool in their arsenal.  Because they can hold a hammer over a defendant's head and say either you give us more Information or you are going to get a five or 10 year sentence," said Stewart.

But the Judicial Conference of the U.S. opposes to mandatory minimum sentences because they tie judges hands.

The Garrisons were never charged with possession, just conspiracy, and maintain they knew nothing about the drugs. They say they refused to lie and ruin someone else's life.

A federal jury in Virginia convicted the Garrisons on the testimony of the garage owner and his brother.  Prosecutors presented no other evidence against them.  Julie Stewart says public outcry over drug violence at the time played a role.

"There was an enormous sensitivity around the crack cocaine issue that I think you could have taken just about anybody to trial and charge them with some sort of crack cocaine offense and found them guilty," Stewart added.

Lawrence served 12 years in prison, his brother almost 14.  The garage owner who implicated them was sentenced to 18 months.  The brothers no longer have any interest in the law.  They say the system is corrupt and that federal mandatory minimum sentences play a big role.

Photo: Reuters Garrett McNamara of Hawaii is pictured with his winning surfboard which he rode in his November 10, 2011, quest, in this photograph released on May 11, 2012.

International surfing officials and the Guinness Book of World records have officially confirmed a giant wave caught by a U.S. surfer off the coast of Portugal last November was the biggest wave ever ridden.

The officials have awarded Hawaiian surfer Garret McNamara the Billabong Global Big Wave Awards prize after reviewing the feat - riding a wave that measured 23.7 meters high.

The 44-year-old surfer was dragged out to the wave on a tow rope, a type of jet ski.

McNamara said he initially didn't want to attempt the waves that day after wiping out earlier on bigger swells in the same spot.

The height of McNamara's wave was decided by a panel of big wave surfing and photography experts who analyzed and measured the photographs and video images of his ride.

SEE THE VIDEO HERE

Photo: Reuters Mitt Romney, President Barack Obama's likely challenger in the November election, speaks at the Liberty University commencement ceremony in Lynchburg in the US state of Virginia May 12, 2012.

Mitt Romney, the presumptive U.S. Republican presidential nominee, drew rousing support Saturday at a conservative Christian university as he defended traditional marriage between a man and a woman.

Romney, often viewed with skepticism by the most conservative ranks of the Republican party, stressed the importance of personal faith and commitment to families in a speech to the graduating class at Liberty University in the eastern U.S. state of Virginia.

But days after U.S. President Barack Obama declared his support for legalizing same-sex marriages, Romney won his biggest cheers from the crowd of more than 30,000 with brief comments supporting heterosexual marriage.

"Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman."

Obama's new support for same-gender marriage is controversial in the U.S., where six states and the District of Columbia have laws permitting men to marry each other and women to wed other women. But 31 states have banned it, including North Carolina in a referendum earlier this month. Nonetheless, surveys show that nationwide the acceptance of gay marriages is growing and that a slight majority favors it.

But the surveys also show there is a split politically, with Democrats, like Obama, lending widespread support for same-sex marriages, and Republicans mostly opposed. Younger voters also are more accepting, with older voters less so.

Obama, who is likely to face Romney in the November election, sought this week to use his new stance on the issue to rally supporters and raise campaign funds. But he did not discuss the issue in his weekly radio address Saturday.

Instead, the president again urged Congress to follow a "To-Do" list he says will boost job creation and the country's sluggish economic recovery from the 2008 and 2009 recession. Later, at a White House ceremony, he honored a group of police officers as the nation's "top cops" for their heroism in the line of duty.