Don’t Shoot the Goat… I Mean the Messenger

I just stumbled across this rather disturbing video of Goat Hunters hunting goats on the Big Island.  It was just posted today, but I’m not sure when the hunt was.  If you’re an animal lover, the following may disturb you:

Hawaii County Spends $25,000 – $30,000 Per MONTH on Picking Garbage Out of Our Landfills

Andrew Cooper recently questioned why recycling was so behind the times here on the Big Island.

Something that I thought might expanded upon, is in a recent blog that Hunter Bishop wrote about on the recent plastic bag ban,  a quote within a comment that Council Lady Naeole’s Legislative Aide Tiffany Edwards Hunt made stated the following:

“…do you know the county spends about $25,000 to $30,000 a month contracting for litter pickup at the landfills?…”

I totally  believe this statement… it just bothers me a bit that we could be paying upwards of $360,000 per year for people/machines to be picking through our trash when we as people could have recycled the stuff to begin with.

I wonder how much other counties are paying for people to be picking up garbage… and the real question…

IS IT EVEN EFFECTIVE?

Big Island and Kauai Exempt from Digital TV Mandate

I first blogged about Hawaii being first in the nation to switch to Digital TV Signals here.  Well it turns out Big Island and Kauai might be waiting a bit longer then even I most recently reported *edit* at least for digital PBS programming.

Hat tip to Leslie Wilcox as she reports on her blog today:

…PBS Hawaii will start a phased digital transition, eventually leaving behind analog technology, which was ground-breaking in its time. We’ll start Jan. 15 on Oahu and in Maui County, moving later to include Hawaii Island and Kauai. (They’re served by translator stations and not transmitters, and therefore are not covered under the federal mandate.)

More Here

West Virginia Looking at Hawaii Gaffs When it Comes to Drug Testing Teachers

It looks like West Virginia is going to try and implement drug testing their teachers.

Hawaii was suppose to start drug testing our teachers along time ago due to some shaky “hang a worm in front of a fish” tactics.  Putting a pay raise in front of the teachers with a clause of drug testing had to be one of the stupidest things that has ever occurred here with the DOE.

We don’t even have money for air conditioners or teachers aides.  Were cutting back programs every year.

Yet they want to spend how much money to randomly test a few teachers?

Well Virginia is looking at the mistakes Hawaii made as you can see from this recent Op-Ed.

Anyone Catch the New Blog in the Islands?

Looks like Dan Douglass has finally started his own blog up.

The Hawaii Liberty Chronicles:

“Hawaii Liberty Chronicles is a freedom oriented site dedicated to honest and open journalism, the exposure of truth and the submission of facts to a candid Hawaii and world. Although issue and politically oriented, Hawaii Liberty Chronicles does not serve any political party…” Dan Douglass

The “Height” of the TMT to be Taller then FED EX Stadium?

Andrew Cooper has an interesting blog about the “Size” of the proposed TMT project with an interesting diagram.  I’ll take his word that it is true to scale in size as I always hated math.

But anyone that knows me… knows I’ll try and twist the story a bit ;)

I noticed from his diagram that it will be “TALLER” then the Fed EX Arena which is a large NFL stadium on comparison to other stadiums.

I’m stealing the following picture from Andrew Coopers recent blog:

I’m curious how it would look to say the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu?

Erika Engle Confirms Hawaii’s Early Digital TV Conversion Plan

I blogged about the possibility of Hawaii having it’s Digital TV conversions pushed up a month about 5 days ago.

The Konablog followed up on it here.

Finally, it get’s around to the local media in a Breaking News Item ;)

Pahoa Graduate and Starbulletin Columnist confirms it in today’s breaking Starbulletin News.

UH Professor Maxwell Called Whistleblower by CNN: Oil Watchdog Agency ‘Cult of Corruption’

So you learn something new everyday.  We have a Government Whistle blower amongst us ;) according to CNN.

…”I believe the management we were under was showing favoritism to the oil industry,”  (Bobby) Maxwell told CNN.

Maxwell is referring to a tiny agency within the Department of the Interior called the Minerals Management Service, which manages the nation’s natural gas, oil and other mineral resources on federal lands…

…”They crossed a lot of lines that should never have been crossed,” he said. “They lost all objectivity.”

Maxwell was in charge of keeping track of the millions in royalty payments owed taxpayers by oil and gas companies who explored and found oil on U.S. government lands

He estimates he and his team were responsible for saving the government close to $500 million in royalties, either underpaid or somehow skipped by oil and gas companies, over the years…

…Just before he lost his job, he said, one of his superiors in Washington ordered him not to investigate why Shell Oil had raised its oil transportation costs. Maxwell said it jumped from 90 cents to $3 a barrel without adequate explanation. The government paid Shell to transport oil from offshore platforms.

When asked why a government worker would tell an auditor not to investigate, he said: “I believe it started from the top down,” he said…

…Maxwell is now retired from the government and teaches at the University of Hawaii. He said it was just a matter of time until the agency’s behavior was exposed. He feels vindicated now in the wake of the inspector general’s report, but is still disgusted by what he was happening at the Minerals Management Service.

“Their job is to protect United States taxpayers’ interest. It’s like they completely forgot that, like they just became part of the oil companies,” he said.

The Interior Department said it could not comment on Maxwell’s specific allegations or removal, saying his former supervisor no longer works for the Interior Department either…

More Here

Honolulu Police Officers Face Discipline for Using Tasers

I don’t think I’ve expressed my distaste for tasers on my blog.  I don’t think they belong in the hands of most many police officers.  Too many times they have been used unjustly on suspects.  Just last month a police officer on the mainland committed suicide because he felt bad about using a taser unwarranted.

I bet these two HPD officers wish they never had them in the first place:

…Honolulu Police Department that took them off the street and placed them under investigation after they used Tasers to subdue two unruly men a month ago.

It is one of the first cases where officers could face discipline as a result of new video cameras installed on the Tasers…

From this news report, it sounds like they were tased multiple times.  I think more officers on the scene would have prevented this, considering neither suspect had any weapons, although they were flying on drugs:

…”The police kept telling them to get down and they wouldn’t listen to the police. So, they’d Taser them. Then they would go down. They would get back up. They’d tell them to get down. They don’t listen again. That was just ongoing for a while,” Higa said…

I’d be curious at just how many times they were actually tasered.

I’d be even more curious to start requesting that every time an officer uses their taser, the public should have access to that video file.

Hilo Man Gets 10 Years for Rock Throwing Incident that Injures 3 Year Old

I remember this incident last year even though I was on Oahu at the time.  It stunned me as my child was the same age as the victim.

A judge sentenced a Hilo man to 10 years in prison for a rock-throwing incident last year.

Patrick Luk, 28, was convicted of assault, criminal property damage and resisting arrest.Last December, a drunken Luk threw rocks at cars. One shattered a window, seriously injuring a 3-year-old boy.

Luk asked for probation, saying he was so drunk he did not know what he was doing.

Judge Glenn Hara rejected the request and sentenced him to spend a decade behind bars.

From the Hawaii Police report last year:

Hilo detectives have charged a 27-year-old Big Island man with first-degree assault, 17 counts of first-degree criminal property damage and resisting arrest. The charges stem from a report early Sunday evening (December 9) that a man was throwing rocks at vehicles traveling on Puainako Street near the Kilauea Avenue intersection in Hilo.

South Hilo patrol officers responded to the reports while the crimes were in progress and arrested Patrick Luk of Hilo.

Eight drivers reported that they were driving on Puainako Street when a man threw baseball-size rocks at their vehicles for no apparent reason. The rocks struck the bodies of some vehicles and windows of others.

In one case, a rock shattered a vehicle’s side window and hit a 3-year-old boy in the face, leading to serious injuries, including a laceration, fracture and brain injury. The boy was flown by air ambulance to The Queens Medical Center on Oahu, where he remains in stable condition.

None of the other vehicles’ occupants received any physical injuries.

Luk is being held at the Hilo cellblock in lieu of $85,500 bail pending his initial court appearance scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in South Hilo District Court.

Witnesses at the scene told police that additional victims left the scene before police arrived.

Mauna Kea to be Testing Grounds for New Robot

Scarab, a robot developed by Carnegie Mellon University with support from NASA, is about to be tested at Hawaii’s Mauna Kea volcano to prove its fitness for the extreme conditions of space…

…The dormant volcano and Hawaii’s highest mountain, Mauna Kea, is best known for its elite observatory of astronomical telescopes. But on this mission, scientists will be looking within instead of out at the universe…

More Here

*edit* I just noticed this blog by someone who appears to be working on the project:

What’s more fun, testing the NASA SCARAB or going to Hawaii to do it?

Today’s KO

Warning: If you have kids… don’t watch this:

Island Dr. John Bellati Explains Why He and Others are Leaving Hawaii

It looks like Malia Zimmerman from the HawaiiReporter just put this up on youtube as well as HR.

Today’s Kook: Linda Lingle… Obama Plans “Would Devastate Economy”

Ok people… Lingle has officially lost it!

…Gov. Linda Lingle, who leaves this week for a second round of campaigning for the Republican presidential ticket, says the economic plans of Democratic candidate Barack Obama “would devastate our economy…”

Geez Lingle… who got us in the mess were in now?  Can it get any worse?

New Product Being Developed and Tested in Hawaii to Protect Bees

Bees are a very important part to agriculture here in Hawaii and on the Big Island in particular.   If they were to be wiped out… the agriculture losses would be significant.  A Hawaii company has been working on ways to protect them and they may have found a product to do that.

…“We have been working with Beehive Hawaii since the spring of this year regarding a coating that would help protect bees in their hives,” explained Francesca Crolley, V.P. of Operations & Marketing for Industrial Nanotech, Inc. “Field trials with their own hives in multiple locations has indicated that our product has provided a successful solution for the colony collapse disorder which has been a crucial issue in the bee industry worldwide. Their successful results and commitment to helping us understand this important industry were instrumental in our decision to launch this new product, which is called Bee Protect…

The product is available directly from Industrial Nanotech, or through Beehive Hawaii, who will serve as our exclusive distributor and representative to the industry.”

More Here

Hilo All You Can Eat Buffet Fundraiser for Pilago

On Sunday, October 26th at her restaurant in the Hilo Waiakea Villas.

Miyo is hosting an afternoon buffet on behalf of

Angel Pilago, Candidate for Mayor.

Come eat, commune and get behind

the people’s candidate.

Angel Pilago has done so much for the community and the `aina.

Here is your chance to show your appreciation and help him in his effort to become our next mayor.

Bring your appetite and your aloha.

Prepared by Hilo’s mistress of Japanese cuisine, the all you can eat buffet is sure to please.

Provided by Hoku Award winning classical guitarist Lee Eisenstein, the music is sure to inspire.

Join Miyo from 2-4 p.m.

The $50 cost per person goes directly to the Committee to Elect Angel Pilago for Mayor.