“Malia headshot Image”

”Hawaii’s Most Anti-Business Former Governor Opens a Business”

Former Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, who will go down in history as the most anti-small business governor ever to serve in Hawaii (or most states for that matter), has ironically just registered his own small business, according to the HawaiiReporter.com public record tracking system.

The report, originally found in the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs public records, says Cayetano registered his business as “Benjamin J. Cayetano LLC,” a Domestic Limited Liability Corp., on Jan. 24, 2003.

Cayetano is listed as the sole contact for the business, which is located at 1926 Okoa St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96821.

Maybe he’ll get a taste of his own anti-business medicine when he has to follow all of the rules and regulations he put into law and has to pay for all of the mandates and taxes he put on business owners. Or maybe he’ll be forced to buy a whole lot of political fundraising tickets from his fellow Democrats in the position of authorizing or funding state or county contracts in hopes of being awarded more government work.

”House-Senate Special Investigative Hearings Resume on Felix Expenditures”

The House-Senate Investigative Committee, the first committee of its kind in Hawaii formed in the summer of 2002 to look into state expenditures of more than $1.4 billion on special needs students and related programs since 1994, had its first meeting of 2003 this past Saturday behind closed doors.

The 12-member bi-partisan committee will meet again on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the Hawaii State Capitol.

The investigation by this committee, which entailed issuing subpoenas to many of Hawaii’s private providers and state employees and directors with the Departments of Health and Education, uncovered questionable procurement of state contracts by then Superintendent Paul LeMahieu. In one case, he authorized a $600,000 contract to a woman he was in a “close personal relationship” with, according to testimony by the woman receiving the contract, the superintendent and other witnesses. LeMahieu quickly resigned after his actions, which included issuing the contract to the woman through another company because her company could not qualify for it, were exposed.

During more than 100 hours of hearings, several other private providers were questioned about their billing practices, including Loveland Academy, which was accused by one of its former directors of improprieties.

The committee also looked into allegations of wrongdoing and fraud by three federal court appointees

“Malia headshot Image”

”Hawaii’s Most Anti-Business Former Governor Opens a Business”

Former Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, who will go down in history as the most anti-small business governor ever to serve in Hawaii (or most states for that matter), has ironically just registered his own small business, according to the HawaiiReporter.com public record tracking system.

The report, originally found in the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs public records, says Cayetano registered his business as “Benjamin J. Cayetano LLC,” a Domestic Limited Liability Corp., on Jan. 24, 2003.

Cayetano is listed as the sole contact for the business, which is located at 1926 Okoa St., Honolulu, Hawaii 96821.

Maybe he’ll get a taste of his own anti-business medicine when he has to follow all of the rules and regulations he put into law and has to pay for all of the mandates and taxes he put on business owners. Or maybe he’ll be forced to buy a whole lot of political fundraising tickets from his fellow Democrats in the position of authorizing or funding state or county contracts in hopes of being awarded more government work.

”House-Senate Special Investigative Hearings Resume on Felix Expenditures”

The House-Senate Investigative Committee, the first committee of its kind in Hawaii formed in the summer of 2002 to look into state expenditures of more than $1.4 billion on special needs students and related programs since 1994, had its first meeting of 2003 this past Saturday behind closed doors.

The 12-member bi-partisan committee will meet again on Tuesday, Feb. 4, at the Hawaii State Capitol.

The investigation by this committee, which entailed issuing subpoenas to many of Hawaii’s private providers and state employees and directors with the Departments of Health and Education, uncovered questionable procurement of state contracts by then Superintendent Paul LeMahieu. In one case, he authorized a $600,000 contract to a woman he was in a “close personal relationship” with, according to testimony by the woman receiving the contract, the superintendent and other witnesses. LeMahieu quickly resigned after his actions, which included issuing the contract to the woman through another company because her company could not qualify for it, were exposed.

During more than 100 hours of hearings, several other private providers were questioned about their billing practices, including Loveland Academy, which was accused by one of its former directors of improprieties.

The committee also looked into allegations of wrongdoing and fraud by three federal court appointees

For those who don’t have the luxury of spending time with the state Legislature, it is that time of the year to share some of the more “notable” proposals forwarded by your legislators.

Of course, the rage this year, as it has been for the past five years, is the mechanism to provide relief, comic or otherwise, called the tax credit. Lawmakers, for their lack of creativity, have come to regard the income tax credit as the panacea for all of the state’s problems.

Just throw a tax credit out there and all the world will come to your door or at least that’s what lawmakers believe.

And there are some real gems. Lawmakers are hell-bent on improving the economy and creating jobs because that is what they think their constituents want. So they throw out a proposal that will give a business 10 percent off its income taxes if that business creates a new job and pays that person 30 percent or more above the state average wage. All the business would have to do is to have at least three employees to begin with and no lay offs or reductions in the number of jobs during the twelve months following the hire of the new employee. What a deal, you get 10 percent off your income taxes just for hiring a “highly paid” employee.

So what’s the big deal? Well, the bill gives the reader the impression that perhaps it’s aimed at helping small businesses with the requirement that the qualifying business must have at least three employees.

Well, a large company like Macy’s has at least three employees. All that company would have to do is to bring in some highly paid vice president and they would qualify as long as they don’t lay anyone off in the next twelve months.

They would be entitled to the 10 percent credit against what might be hundreds of thousands of dollars of income taxes. Give a few large companies like that the credit and sooner or later there will be no money from the net income tax on businesses.

Then it seems lawmakers feel guilty about having required taxpayers to either get a license or stay in businesses, so they give out tax credits to soften the blow of what they have just socked to taxpayers. Enter the tax credit for having taken a driver’s education course. Now that youth who younger than 18 years of age are required to take a driver’s education class in order to get their driver’s license, lawmakers want to give them a tax credit to help offset the cost of the tuition for the class. Perhaps lawmakers think they can stop the grousing about the costly education requirement if they give them a rebate on part or all of their tuition.

Then there is the tax credit that would rebate some portion of the cost of installing a grease trap. These grease traps are now required of all restaurants by either state or county law. So first they make restaurants put these contraptions in so that the grease doesn’t go into the sewers, now they come back and try to mitigate the pain of the cost with a tax credit. Seems like lawmakers just don’t want to take the heat for something that makes it more difficult to do business in the state, so they throw a tax credit at it.

And sometimes lawmakers forget what they did in the past and try to correct the same problem a second time. Such is the case in the bill that would give a rebate on the cost of operating leases of aircraft equipment. This proposal comes a year after lawmakers decided to exempt the local airlines from the 4 percent general excise and use tax on their operating leases of aircraft and aircraft equipment. Oops! Maybe lawmakers really did want to subsidize the lease rent payments of the two local carriers. That’s all right, it is all green money anyway.

Now don’t sell those lawmakers short. After all they do everything possible to help businesses like with the credit to entice businesses to participate in an industry tracking program. If businesses do participate in this proposed program, they could claim a $25 per employee credit. What did you say, what does that have to do with making things better to do business in Hawaii? We don’t know, but that would be an easy way to pick up some pocket change.

So it is a credit here and credit there all the while lawmakers are bemoaning the fact that there isn’t enough money in the pot to fund everything they would like to fund. But what the heck, those tax credits represent nothing but free money.

”’Lowell L. Kalapa is the president of the Tax Foundation of Hawaii, a private, non-profit educational organization. For more information, please call 536-4587 or log on to”’ https://www.tfhawaii.org

WASHINGTON (UPI) — President George W. Bush [released] a $2.25 trillion 2004 federal budget today, Monday, Feb. 3, expected to bolster defense and homeland security operations as the nation is poised on the brink of a war in the Middle East and crisis on the Korean peninsula.

”’To see the budget, go to”’ https://www.whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/budget-fy2004/

In addition to $399.1 billion in defense spending, up from $382.2 billion this year, the budget raises homeland security from $37.7 billion in 2003 to $41.3 billion in 2004.

Even before the Shuttle Columbia disaster Saturday, the budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had been increased to some $15.5 billion from $15 billion in 2003.

At the same time, Bush has proposed a 10-year, $674 billion economic growth plan that includes more than $650 billion in tax cuts. It has triggered new charges from the Democrats that his budget is runaway deficit spending.

The budget will estimate a deficit for fiscal 2003 of $307 billion and $304 billion for 2004 — both surpassing the 1992 record of $290 billion when Bush’s father was president.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have charged that Bush’s tax plans would end in $1.7 trillion in debt by 2011.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday said 52 percent of Americans disapprove of how the president is handling the economy.

The president’s budget books will be made public early Monday, encased in a white cover bearing a blue-line drawing of the White House.

“Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and stock market declines, our economy is recovering — yet it is not growing fast enough, or strongly enough,” Bush said last week during his State of the Union address.

The administration will submit its federal budget proposal to a Republican-controlled Congress as questions remain about exactly how much it will cost the United States to prosecute a war against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“If war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military — and we will prevail,” Bush said in his State of the Union speech. “And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food, and medicines, and supplies … and freedom.”

Bush has proposed a higher defense budget than any since the early 1990s, and the Pentagon expects it to grow to $484 billion in spending by fiscal year 2009, according to sources familiar with the budget, including the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

The package makes the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006 permanent and effective this year, abolishes the marriage penalty and hikes the child tax credit to $1,000, both effective immediately.

Part of Bush’s economic recovery plan would provide $3.6 billion for so-called Personal Re-employment Accounts that would provide the jobless with up to $3,000 to use in their search for work.

But the plan also eliminates the tax on share dividends and Democrats lambasted it as a bail-out for the wealthy that will produce deficits of more than $1 trillion over the next decade and do little to stimulate the economy. An effective plan, they said, would have to be immediate, benefit as many people as possible and be fiscally responsible.

With the threat of a conflict that might disrupt half of the United States’ oil supplies, Bush has proposed funding what he calls the Freedom Fuel and Freedom Car Initiatives, slated to reverse America’s dependence on foreign oil sources. He proposed spending $1.2 billion over five years to develop technology needed for viable hydrogen-powered fuel cells to power cars and trucks.

The budget proposal will provide $6 billion over 10 years to pay for Project BioShield, “next generation” vaccines for anthrax, smallpox, botulinum toxin, and additional unspecified funds to produce and purchase so-called treatments for dangerous agents such as Ebola and plague.

Bush proposed $15 billion for an emergency HIV/AIDS plan that will address the international pandemic, particularly in Africa and the Caribbean. The fund would receive $2 billion in 2004 and then increase in subsequent years.

The president sought to resurrect interest in his faith-based and “compassionate conservative” agendas with $450 million for mentors for children of prison inmates and more than 1 million disadvantaged middle school children. The administration also announced a three-year, $600 million federal treatment initiative for drug-addicted Americans.

Medicare reform has been a cornerstone of Bush’s domestic agenda, along with providing prescription drug coverage for seniors who have been faced with escalating medication costs. Bush said he plans to set aside $400 billion to revamp the senior health insurance plan to give the elderly more choices in how they receive their medical care.

The administration also proposed providing in 2004 an additional $3.25 billion in federal funding for Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income families. The program would receive a total of $12.7 billion over the next seven years under the budget proposal.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

NEW DELHI, Feb. 3 (UPI) — India-born Columbia astronaut Kalpana Chawla had told her brother that if she had to die, she hoped it would be in a crash.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that her words haunted her brother Girish as he flew from Atlanta to Houston to join the rest of bereaved Chawla family.

“I am shocked, stunned,” Girish Chawla said. “She was a very determined person. She was totally dedicated to her profession.”

Girish Chawla and his wife Harvinder Gill were woken by a call from relatives in India to say that Columbia had broken up some 200,000 feet above Texas and about 16 minutes from when it was to land at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“I said, ‘Oh, no. I can’t believe it,’ ” Gill said. “I came hurriedly down the stairs and turned the TV on. There it was — on the TV.”

Kalpana Chawla’s father Banarsi Das, mother Sanjogta, and her two sisters and a sister-in-law had recently come from India to witness the Jan. 16 launch of Columbia from Cape Canaveral.

Her India-born brother Sanjay Chawla too is scheduled to fly to Houston to join the devastated family.

Kalpana lived for the very event she died in. In pre-flight interviews, she had described the ascent, re-entry, and landing of the spacecraft as the most exciting and enjoyable moments of the space odyssey, The Times of India reported.

Kalpana Chawla, 42, born in north Indian town Karnal, had immigrated to United States in 1984 to pursue master’s degree in aeronautical engineering.

She saw herself as a citizen of the world and following her debut space flight in 1997, she described how spinning around the Earth in just 90 minutes gave her a sense of belonging to the whole planet and not just any one country or community, the newspaper reported.

Kalpana remained in touch with her first school and engineering college. Her school in Karnal, Tagore Bal Niketan, had named its science room after her, the first Indian woman astronaut.

A condolence meeting was held Monday at the Panjab Engineering College in Chandigarh where she graduated before moving to United States to do her Masters in aeronautical engineering.

She became India’s national heroine in 1997 after her first foray into space. She made it to the cover of India’s leading weekly India Today last month.

She has dominated the newspaper headlines for the last two days in India, overshadowing major political events. She has found an immediate fame and recognition after her death.

India’s junior federal minister I D Swami announced the foundation of a medical college cum hospital in Karnal. The Haryana state government declared a two-day mourning period in her memory and all government offices, schools and colleges remained shut Monday as a mark of respect to Kalpana Chawla.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in a message to U.S. President George W. Bush, said, “We convey our heartfelt sympathies at the tragedy, which has overtaken the space shuttle Columbia. We mourn with you in this moment of grief and our hearts go out to the families of the bright young men and women who worked on the spacecraft.”

“For us in India, the fact that one of them was an Indian-born woman adds a special poignancy to the tragedy,” he said.

“We in India had been specially proud that our own Kalpana Chawla was part of this space mission. Alas, we have tragically, though heroically, lost her. We are proud of you, Kalpana, we salute you,” India’s President A.P. J. Abdul Kalam said.

Chawla was flight engineer and mission specialist aboard the shuttle Columbia. She graduated from Punjab Engineering College before beginning work at NASA Ames Research Center in fluid dynamics.

She received a master’s degree in 1984 from the University of Texas, and in 1988 received doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Colorado.

NASA selected Chawla as an astronaut candidate in 1994, and she joined the 15th group of astronauts in March 1995.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

“Suzanne Gelb Image”

Dear Readers:

As an added resource, over the next few months I will supplement my answers with self-help materials. Supplemental reading for today’s answers can be found in my book “Welcome Home. A Book About Overcoming Addictions” (pp. 59-60 for Answer 1; pp. 61 for Answer 2). For more information visit my Web site at www.DrGelbSays.com.

”Hectic Schedule – Why the Panic?”

Dear Dr. Gelb:

I’m 12 years old and my mom works part time as a salesperson when we’re at school, and she cares for my little sister and me the rest of the time. When mom’s around she is always busy and it is hectic at home. She is always rushing and at night sometimes I go downstairs when I’m supposed to be asleep and I peak in the kitchen and most times she sits at the kitchen table and pigs out. I’m learning in school about how obesity is bad for people’s health, I worry about her.

Concerned Kid

A: Dr. Gelb says . . .

Dear Concerned:

Oh 12-year-old, what it would be like to be 12 again and be as smart and observant as you are. You obviously love your mother very much and even at the chance at being scolded, if I were you I would mention to her how much I loved her and that I wish she wouldn’t eat so much. I would tell her that I am studying in school how unhealthy it is to be obese and I certainly don’t want to lose her as my mother before I go to college. Then I would give her a big hug and go back to bed.

”Good feelings – Will They Last?”

Dear Dr. Gelb:

For three months now I have kicked a drinking habit. I feel good about it, but stress gets me riled up. I’m determined not to go off the wagon, but I wish that upsets would not get to me the way they do.

Ex-Drinker

A: Dr. Gelb says . . .

Dear Drinker Who Doesn’t Drink:

I believe that it is so important for people who have kicked an addictive habit such as drinking to remember that they are drinkers who don’t drink, rather than ex-drinkers. I urge them to remember how easy it was to blame others for their habit — “they made me mad or frustrated; they were doing things wrong and relying on me to do everything for them; they are making mistakes that I have to correct.” Then there are “the road hogs, bad smells, bad food in restaurants, and uncooperative wife and children.” These excuses have been used by many to justify an addictive habit.

I can only say that in my opinion many addictions are by choice, and no matter how painful withdrawal and abstaining may be, it is worth it. You have obviously kicked the habit or at least refused to succumb to it for a while. I hope that you never allow the reasons above or similar self-talk to con you into taking another drink. Some individuals who have found themselves at a similar point of recovery such as you describe, have later found that they developed the ability to have a social glass of wine or their favorite beverage and not succumb to a habitual need for it.

”’Suzanne J. Gelb, Ph.D., J.D. authors this daily column, Dr. Gelb Says, which answers questions about daily living and behavior issues. Dr. Gelb is a licensed psychologist in private practice in Honolulu. She holds a Ph.D. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Human Services. Dr. Gelb is also a published author of a book on Overcoming Addictions and a book on Relationships.”’

”’This column is intended for entertainment use only and is not intended for the purpose of psychological diagnosis, treatment or personalized advice. For more about the column’s purpose, see”’ “An Online Intro to Dr. Gelb Says”

”’Email your questions to mailto:DrGelbSays@hawaiireporter.com More information on Dr. Gelb’s services and related resources available at”’ https://www.DrGelbSays.com