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Conklin rebuttal to Bill Fernandez, “The Temple of Science”

Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.  provides a rebuttal to the following article:
Bill Fernandez, “The Temple of Science,” The Garden Island [Kaua’i newspaper], August 9, 2019, Guest Commentary.
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2019/08/09/opinion/the-temple-of-science/

The Garden Island newspaper editor’s tagline says “Bill Fernandez is a former attorney, judge and mayor, is an author and is a resident of Kapaa.” So Mr. Fernandez is not some crazy sovereignty activist whose ignorance and zealousness cause him to twist history and say outright falsehoods in a manner which an attorney might call “excited utterance.” His essay should be taken seriously, which is exactly how he intends it to be taken. I will provide a point-by-point rebuttal to his numbing litany of grievances. This rebuttal is too detailed (and perhaps boring) to be published in a newspaper. Truth is often boring, so please bear with me.

Bill Fernandez was born and raised on Kaua’i and then went to the mainland [California] for college, where he became a successful lawyer, mayor, and judge. So he is an example of local boy makes good on the mainland, retires, and comes “home” to Kaua’i. See a biography of him published in [surprise!] the same newspaper two months before this essay: “Bill Fernandez honored by Kamehameha Schools Alumni Association” as the honoree of the year and paraded through Waikiki, article in The Garden Island newspaper on June 12, 2019 at
https://www.thegardenisland.com/2019/06/12/hawaii-news/bill-fernandez-honored-by-kamehameha-schools-alumni-association/

Therefore he’s a big fish in a small pond, gets a lot of local respect. The local newspaper will publish whatever he submits to them and has done so for years, even if it is bombastic and filled with falsehoods. And of course it would be “rude” and unacceptable for public relations to publish any aggressive rebuttal, as well as impractical to publish a lengthy and boring one.

First, Conklin’s overall, general, very quick analysis of the motive of Mr. Fernandez. After that, rebuttals are given to specific points in the order they are raised by Mr. Fernandez.

——-

Conklin’s overall, general, very quick reply concerning motive of Mr. Fernandez:

Victimhood is a wonderful asset to have. If you can persuade people that you’re a victim, that gives you the right to seek sympathy, and to demand reparations. Sympathy leads to political power, and reparations lead to wealth. See webpage
“The Hawaiian Grievance Industry — Panhandling for Race-Based Handouts and Political Power” at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/grievanceindustry.html

One of the strange things about politics in Hawai’i is the aggressiveness of racial profiling and racial stereotyping for fun and profit. But surprisingly, in Hawaii the profiling and stereotyping are done by ethnic Hawaiians against ethnic Hawaiians as a racial group! Ethnic Hawaiian leaders love to portray their group as having the worst statistics for cancer, heart disease, drug abuse, incarceration, poverty … the list goes on and on. The idea is to make the general public feel sorry for them and give them political power to manage their own affairs; and to use the data to get government and philanthropic grants for “research studies” whose main purpose is to do more studies to get more data to bolster more grant applications while building a permanent cadre of highly paid bureaucrats and leaders (without actually doing research to find out how the “Hawaiian gene” causes these bad things [there is no real connection and probably no Hawaiian gene] or how to cure the problems biologically). See detailed analysis and examples in webpage
“Native Hawaiian victimhood — malpractice in the gathering and statistical analysis of data allegedly showing disproportionate Native Hawaiian victimhood for disease and social dysfunction. How and why the Hawaiian grievance industry uses bogus statistics to scam government and philanthropic organizations, politicians, and public opinion.” at
http://big11a.angelfire.com/NatHwnVictimhoodStatScam.html
See also webpage
“For Hawaiians Only. Webpages identifying and describing government funded racial entitlement programs providing benefits exclusively to Native Hawaiians using taxpayer dollars from the U.S. and State of Hawaii.” at
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/ForHawaiiansOnly.html

During the past 20 years Mr. Fernandez occasionally wrote essays supporting the Akaka bill to create a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe as a way of providing legal defense for hundreds of racial entitlement programs, and other essays to support Kamehameha Schools’ racially exclusionary admissions policy. To find some of those items go to the front page of my website at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/
and use the little internal search engine for these two pairs of keywords (one pair at a time)
Fernandez Akaka
Fernandez Kamehameha

Mr. Fernandez, being a former lawyer and judge, might have some experience with lawyers who sue insurance companies on behalf of clients who suffered minor injuries in a fender-bender. A client’s car might have been rear-ended at a stop light by the car behind him traveling at 2 MPH; client claims whiplash caused severe neck injuries and lawyer sues for a bazillion dollars for medical injuries and “pain and suffering.” Of course the injuries and pain will be grossly inflated, and disabilities with unrelated causes will be ascribed to the fender-bender, in hopes that the damages awarded by the jury will be huge (along with the lawyer’s 1/3 contingency fee).

———

Fernandez: “Suppression of the Hawaiian culture began in 1820 when missionaries arrived and decreed that Hawaiian culture and language, the hula, mele, oli, chants, and songs were immoral, lewd, and pagan.

Conklin: Fernandez should be reminded that the missionaries had no authority to decree anything. They were welcomed by the native chiefs in 1820, AFTER the native leaders had already abolished the old religion in 1819, the year before the missionaries came. Any new laws were “decreed” not by missionaries but by the dictatorial authority of the native kings and chiefs exercising self-determination on behalf of the natives.

The old religion was abolished publicly and decisively by the 4 top leaders of the natives themselves at a huge lu’au that was held soon after the death of Kamehameha The Great to introduce his elder son Liholiho who was now Kamehameha II. The leaders abolished the old religion by publicly breaking the ‘aikapu (men and women must eat separately). These 2 men and 2 women sat down together and ate — a sacrilege punishable by immediate death — and the assembled crowd gasped in horror until a short speech was given.

1. King Liholiho Kamehameha II; the elder son of Kamehameha The Great;

2. Keopuolani, his biological mother, the “sacred wife” of Kamehameha The Great, had the highest spiritual mana in all Hawaii and the kapumoe (anyone nearby must lie face down in the dirt to avoid polluting her mana);

3. Ka’ahumanu his stepmother and favorite wife of Kamehameha The Great, who made a political coup by stepping forward at the lu’au immediately after breaking the ‘aikapu; she stood next to Liholiho and boldly took over the government by announcing “We two shall rule together” and proceeded to be kuhina nui (regent) for both Kamehameha II and Kamehameha III for many years;

4. Hewahewa, the kahuna nui (high priest) of the old religion. By the way, although “hewa” means “sin”, his name instead referred to sacred dancing.

Today’s activists on Mauna Kea and in other political actions disrespect the clear choice of their ancestral leadership by trying to revive the dead religion they killed, and also by using that deeply revered old religion as a mere pawn in today’s political games.

————-

Fernandez: “This suppression continued [from 1820 missionary arrival] until the Hawaiian Renaissance in the 1970s.”

Conklin: Mr. Fernandez conveniently overlooks the fact that the monarchy retained absolute power over lawmaking and administration of justice, until the first Constitution was proclaimed in 1840 creating a legislature and judiciary and giving rights to individuals. Further, the monarchy retained absolute ownership of all Hawaii lands including the right to take back previous land grants on the whim of the King, until the Mahele process began in 1848 to create private fee-simple land ownership. Fernandez overlooks the fact that the monarchy continued until the revolution of 1893 overthrew it. He overlooks the fact that at least 6 native Hawaiians were on the committee that wrote the Constitution of the Republic of Hawaii, and the Speaker of the House was full-blooded native former royalist John Kaulukou. Fernandez overlooks the fact that the first and second Territorial Delegates to the U.S. Congress, elected by public vote of all citizens without racial restriction or property requirements, were Native Hawaiians Robert Wilcox and [former] Crown Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana’ole. He forgets that the Territorial legislature, elected by vote of all citizens, had a majority of Native Hawaiians for three to four decades, until World War 2. John Waihe’e was Governor of Hawaii for 8 years, 1996 – 2004. Native Hawaiian members in the state Senate and House continue to be roughly in proportion to their population, including powerful committee chairmanships and leadership positions. There has been a huge renaissance of Hawaiian culture and language starting in the 1970s and strengthening through now, perhaps most visible in hula [televised Merrie Monarch and Prince Lot annual hula festivals], voyaging canoes [Hokule’a and many others], and song contests [televised annual Kamehameha School]. What suppression is Mr. Fernandez talking about? The only suppression is any shred of objectivity in Fernandez’ mind.

——–

Fernandez: “Hawaiians lost their land to the colonizers.”

Conklin: Whoa! The Government lands of the Kingdom remained under control of the monarch and legislature where natives held the great majority, and the Crown lands remained property of the monarch and then of the Kingdom government for 73 years after the missionaries arrived, until there was no more crown after 1893. That’s 2/3 of Hawaii’s land that was NOT “lost to the colonizers.” The largest private landowner (large in both body and landholdings!) was Princess Ruth Ke’elikolani, who gave her land to Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, who gave the combined lands of Ruth and Pauahi to Kamehameha Schools — approximately 10% of all the lands in Hawaii even to this day. Then there are the 203,000 acres set aside for native Hawaiians in the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920; and other lands such as the entire Kahana Valley on O’ahu. Regarding Kahana Valley and “lost land”: It’s amusing how one activist (Robert Stauffer) wrote a whole book claiming that Kahana Valley fell out of Hawaiian ownership simply because it became owned by Mary Foster, who had “only” 1/4 Hawaiian blood. See my detailed book review
“Kahana: How the Land Was Lost by Robert H. Stauffer. BOOK REVIEW” at
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/staufferkahana.html

———-

Fernandez: “Colonizers also know that suppression of native language is key to subjugating a native people. Look at Hawaii. After the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893, they banned the use of the Hawaiian language (Act 57, section 30 of the 1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii). This law led to the suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government, and the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.”

Conklin: Judge Fernandez, Your “Honor”, you need to read what the law actually said and learn how it was implemented. You — a lawyer and judge — need to read what the law said! It’s easy to tell a lie and move on; it’s harder to explain the truth. Bear with me. This is a topic where I am an expert witness.

The Hawaiian kingdom had a compulsory school attendance law, which was continued under the Provisional Government, Republic, Territory, and State of Hawaii. Any school attendance law must include a definition of what constitutes a “school.” To make sure parents or factories or taro farms cannot get around the law by establishing sham “schools,” the government defines the minimum requirements that must be met before a “school” is certified as meeting the requirements of the attendance law. Such minimum requirements for facilities, curriculum, and performance review apply to all schools, both government and private. Government certification of schools does not prohibit other schools or academies. For example, Christian churches can operate “Sunday schools” or Buddhist temples can have “Dharma schools” for religious instruction; or ethnic groups can set up after-school or weekend academies to perpetuate a culture and language — the Japanese did that with hundreds of after-school academies throughout the 1900s and continuing now.

Following the revolution of 1893, the Republic of Hawai’i passed a law more than three years later, in 1896, specifying that English must be the language of instruction in any school receiving “recognition” or certification as meeting the compulsory attendance law. Here is the exact wording of that law:

1896 Laws of the Republic of Hawaii, Act 57, sec. 30: “The English Language shall be the medium and basis of instruction in all public and private schools, provided that where it is desired that another language shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance. Any schools that shall not conform to the provisions of this section shall not be recognized by the Department.” [signed] June 8 A.D., 1896 Sanford B. Dole, President of the Republic of Hawaii.

The law clearly concerns only schools, not society at large and certainly not newspapers. It does not single out Hawaiian language at all — it applies equally to all languages other than English, including Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese, etc. The majority of Hawaii’s children at that time were children of Japanese and Chinese plantation workers, and there were also numerous immigrants from Portugal working on the plantations, mostly as lunas. The law wanted every citizen or long-term resident to have a language in common that they all could speak — especially Japanese and Chinese. The Republic was looking forward to annexation to the United States. Every child born in Hawaii would grow up to become American citizens after annexation, and English would be essential for citizen participation in government and commerce. The law does not prohibit establishing private after-school or weekend academies where the medium of instruction could be Hawaiian (or any other language) — it merely states that such schools will not be recognized by the government as satisfying the requirement that all children must attend school. The law clearly states that other languages (including Hawaiian) may be taught in a language course. Hawaiian language courses were offered at Kamehameha School, but Spanish was more popular with the students. And in fact the Territorial legislature passed laws appropriating money to publish Hawaiian language dictionaries for use in the government schools.

Some ethnic groups, most notably first-generation immigrant Japanese plantation workers, did indeed have private schools for “after school” or weekend instruction in their language and culture (see astonishing information about just how prevalent this was, near the end of a webpage). Many, perhaps most Hawaiian parents went so far as to demand that their children speak only English at home as well as at school. There was simply no desire among Hawaiian parents to set up special academies to perpetuate Hawaiian language. Ethnic Hawaiians working on the plantations or elsewhere were legally free to do what the Japanese actually did. The Hawaiians were also being paid at a higher wage rate than the Japanese, who were at the bottom of the scale (until Filipinos started coming to Hawai’i in 1906 and occupied the bottom). The Japanese felt it was important to invest their time and money to perpetuate their culture and language; while the Hawaiian parents, to the contrary, felt it was important to demand that their children speak English and assimilate to Euro-American cultural values.

There are many, many details to explain, but not here in a mere comment. So let me give the following webpage links:

Was Hawaiian Language Illegal?
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl

Holding the State of Hawaii Department of Education accountable for propagating the lie that Hawaiian language was banned.
https://tinyurl.com/z77ogbq

“Examples of Some Angry or Bitter Published Articles Claiming That Ethnic Hawaiians Were Victimized by Having Their Language Made Illegal or Suppressed” [I’ll be adding this ridiculous Fernandez article to the collection]
https://tinyurl.com/83xmb

“Hawaiian Language as a Political Weapon” with 16 detailed subpages
https://tinyurl.com/668vqyz

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Fernandez: “This law [English as the language of instruction in schools] led to the suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government, and the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.”

Conklin: In recent years we have all learned that newspapers printed in Hawaiian language were published continuously from 1834 all the way through 1948. Some lasted only a short time with small circulation; others had large circulation and lasted for many years. There were both English-language and Hawaiian-language newspapers editorially favorable to the monarchy and opposed to annexation; and also newspapers in both languages happy with the overthrow of the monarchy and favorable to annexation.

Following the January 17 1893 revolution, the revolutionary Provisional Government did what all revolutionary governments in the world have always done with mass media (including radio and television nowadays) — they temporarily banned the publication of pro-monarchy newspapers. But in Hawaii such censorship to stifle possible rioting lasted only one or two weeks, and then freedom of the press resumed. There were newspapers that viciously attacked President Sanford Dole and published poetry and stories favorable to Lili’uokalani and other royalists. Perhaps even Mr. Fernandez might have heard the widely known stories about people loyal to Lili’uokalani visiting her when she was imprisoned in the Palace following the attempted Wilcox counterrevolution of 1895 — and they always brought her flowers WRAPPED IN ROYALIST NEWSPAPERS so that she could circumvent the ban on political information going to or from her and see what her friends were doing on her behalf. Clearly, there was no censorship or “suppression of native newspapers unfavorable to the new government” as claimed by Fernandez.

Fernandez is also wrong that the language law caused “the end of teaching Hawaiian language in schools.” Surely a lawyer/judge can understand the difference between teaching a language as a subject of study vs. teaching subject matter in math, science, history, etc. through the use of that language as the medium of instruction. Read the wording of the law Judge Fernandez. It clearly says “where it is desired that another language [could be Hawaiian] shall be taught in addition to the English language, such instruction may be authorized by the Department, either by its rules, the curriculum of the school, or by direct order in any particular instance.” Families not already fluent in Hawaiian had no interest in getting their kids to learn it; whereas families that spoke Hawaiian at home could continue doing so and could also send their kids to after-school academies to be taught in Hawaiian just like the Japanese established Japanese-language academies; but most Hawaiian parents were glad to have their kids learn English in school and many such parents demanded their kids speak only English in the home as well — the parents would speak Hawaiian between themselves but required their kids to speak only English.

———–

Fernandez: “When annexation and the Organic Act created the Territory, the Hawaiian people received nothing because no government existed to protect them nor categorize them as the indigenous people of the eight islands of the archipelago. Unlike some North American tribes on the continent no treaty was enacted.”

Conklin: That’s absurd! The natives received whatever everyone else received, including American citizenship for all persons who were citizens of the Republic of Hawaii and for anyone born in Hawaii; and a guarantee that revenue from the ceded lands must be used “for education and other public purposes” for the benefit of all residents of the Territory including natives. Fernandez is in reality complaining that there were no racial entitlement programs benefiting ethnic Hawaiians exclusively based on race alone [until the first such law was enacted — the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920]. Today we have over a thousand racially exclusionary programs solely for the benefit of Native Hawaiians. I hope he’ll go to the library and read my book identifying what he apparently champions: “Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State.” It’s also available for purchase direct from the publisher through
http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa

Fernandez’ talk about North American tribes shows that he continues to favor creation of a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe, either through legislation like the Akaka bill [Fernandez wrote essays favoring the bill when it was alive in Congress] or through implementation of the Department of Interior regulation proclaimed by publication in the Federal Register on October 14, 2016. That regulation is a sleeper agent of Hawaiian apartheid ready to be implemented whenever the tribalists feel political conditions are right.

A webpage reviews the history of efforts to get official government recognition of ethnic Hawaiians as a political entity or Indian tribe — a narrative summary covering 19 years 2000 through 2018, broken into two-year Congressional periods. Each “Congress” has a link to an index for that two year period, broken into sub-indexes in chronological order, linking to webpages providing full text of news reports, commentaries, and lawsuits regarding the Akaka bill in Congress, stealth maneuvers by Senator Inouye, Obama Department of Interior regulatory process, Hawaii legislature bills and resolutions, etc.; and efforts to gain local and international recognition of Hawaii as an allegedly continuing independent nation, through protests and lawsuits in Hawaii regarding Mauna Kea and taxes on land, and lobbying activity in the United Nations (both New York and Geneva). Go to
http://big11a.angelfire.com/AkakaHistSummary2000to2018.html

See a webpage describing how the DOI regulation 43CFR50 was proclaimed, including links to full text of the regulation and testimony in opposition during both comment periods:
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/Repeal43CFR50.html

————

After reciting his lengthy list of alleged victimhood grievances relying on history-twisting and falsehoods, Mr. Fernandez then spends the second half of his essay expressing his views about how Hawaiian culture before Captain Cook was superior to European and American culture, and how the Native Hawaiian blockade and takeover of Mauna Kea illustrates respect for the land and is a reassertion of Native Hawaiian self-determination. He cites the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and he says “Lieutenant Governor Josh Green got it right when on Mauna Kea he said, ‘It is time for reconciliation with Hawaii’s host culture.'”

Conklin has webpages showing that ethnic Hawaiians are not an indigenous people, that the term “host culture” is a poisonous concept implying that people with no Hawaiian blood are merely guests with no rightful standing in the ethnic Hawaiian homeland, and a direct response to Josh Green’s pandering screed.

The concept of Native Hawaiians owning the “host culture” is astoundingly divisive because it portrays everyone lacking a drop of the magic blood as being mere guests. It’s a racist political tactic which in recent years many academics and journalists have begun calling “othering” — portray ethnic Hawaiians as being entitled to govern Hawaii because, according to a creation legend, they are biologically children of the gods and brothers to the land in a way nobody else can ever be who lacks a drop of the magic blood — therefore portraying everyone else as “other” — different, alien, permanent outsider, mere (unwanted) guest or even invader and exploiter and oppressor. That’s exactly the tone of Bill Fernandez’ commentary.

An example of “othering” is the demand that nobody lacking a drop of the magic blood can use the word “Hawaiian” to describe themselves. Every “Hawaiian” by definition has the magic blood; every OTHER person can be a resident or “settler” but is always a “non-Hawaiian.” Because of pressure from ethnic Hawaiian activists, the Associated Press a few years ago included in its stylesheet that in news reports the word “Hawaiian” must be reserved for ethnic Hawaiians, while others can be called “Hawaii resident” or “Hawaii-born” or “native of Hawaii” but never “Hawaiian” or “native Hawaiian.” At this time there are Caucasians with no Hawaiian blood whose families have lived in Hawaii for 8 generations, and Asians whose families have 6 generations in Hawaii; but the language police call them non-Hawaiian will not allow them to call themselves Hawaiian.

Although I was not born or raised in Hawaii, I visited during three summers from 1982 to 1989, felt a spiritual calling, and moved permanently to Kane’ohe in 1992 — and since then I have never left Hawaii, for 27 years! I have traveled to dozens of nations and speak 6 languages. But Hawaii hanai’d (adopted) me, and I hanai’d Hawaii. I have probably lived in Hawaii longer than Bill Fernandez. For sure I have lived in Hawaii longer than most ethnic Hawaiians have been on this Earth, since Census says their median age is 26. I understand the culture and history, and speak Hawaiian with moderate fluency. Hawaii is my hanai homeland. I am Hawaiian, whether the language police like it or not. A well-known song describes my own odyssey: “He Hawai’i Au” also known as “I Keia Po”. My journey was lengthy, seeking a place in this world; but I have returned; and I clearly realize that home is in my heart; I will not wander again because I understand — I am Hawaiian.
Words (Hawaiian/English)
https://www.huapala.org/He/He_Hawaii_Au.html
Music (First video has song sung like a hymn with beautiful scenery and artifacts, then faster upbeat tempo; automatically followed by all-Japanese hula performance of it).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ovXExp42I

“Are kanaka maoli indigenous to Hawai’i? Would the status of being indigenous give them special rights?”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/indigenous.html

“Akaka Bill: Replacing Democracy and Individual Rights With Indigenous Communal (Group) Rights”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi5/bigfiles3/AkakaDemocIndivRtsVsCommunalGpRts.html

“Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights — The General Theory, and Why It Does Not Apply in Hawaii”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/indigenousintellproprts.html

“Were non-kanaka maoli historically full partners in Hawai’i, or only second-class guests?”
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/fullpartners.html

“Asian Settler Colonialism [Hawaii] — book review”
http://www.angelfire.com/big09a/AsianSettlerColonialism.html

“Hawaiian religious fascism. A twisted version of a beautiful creation legend provides the theological basis for a claim that ethnic Hawaiians are entitled to racial supremacy in the governance and cultural life of the Hawaiian islands.” [includes a link to full text of the “Constitution of the Native Hawaiian Nation” adopted on February 26, 2016 in a monthlong meeting paid for by OHA, and an analysis of its racism and fascism — this is the tribal Constitution which would be submitted to the Department of Interior as part of the process for federal recognition of a Hawaiian tribe under 43CFR50]
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/HawnReligFascism.html

“The Aloha Spirit. How aloha for all, manifested in the twin pillars of unity and equality, can overcome Hawaiian religious fascism which is the theological basis for a claim to racial supremacy.”
http://www.angelfire.com/big11a/AlohaUnityEquality.html

Ken Conklin’s Facebook reply to Lt. Gov. Josh Green’s pandering support for the Mauna Kea protesters:
https://www.facebook.com/kenneth.conklin.10/posts/1607282602740030

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Hawaiian language never banned; Goebbels Award to PBS-Hawaii

The Goebbels Award For Outstanding Use of Media for Propaganda Disguised As Fact

has been awarded jointly to PBS-Hawaii and Leslie Wilcox, its President and CEO;

for refusing to correct a racially inflammatory falsehood about the alleged banning of Hawaiian language in the schools of Hawaii. The falsehood was asserted repeatedly in advertisements through email, televised teasers, and website announcements ahead of an INSIGHTS panel discussion televised live on March 28, 2019 regarding the history and revival of Hawaiian language; and was anticipated to be also asserted by panelists during the discussion.

This Goebbels Award can be seen at
http://big11a.angelfire.com/GoebbelsAwardPBSLeslie032819.html

For a long time PBS-Hawaii President/CEO Leslie Wilxcox has been sending out an email blast on Fridays announcing major TV shows that will be broadcast during the following week. The contents of those announcements are also displayed on the station’s website, Facebook page, etc. for maximum publicity. The announcement sent on Friday March 22, 2019 included a description of an upcoming 60-minute live panel discussion in the long-running “Insights” series to be broadcast on Thursday March 28 from 8-9 PM.

The announcement can be seen where it was placed on the PBS-Hawaii website on March 22 at
https://www.pbshawaii.org/insights-on-pbs-hawaii-the-hawaiian-language/

The first sentence says:
“Ka ‘ÅŒlelo Hawai’i, the Hawaiian Language, once forbidden in schools and nearly lost, is flourishing again in these Islands.”

The racially inflammatory falsehood is this seemingly harmless phrase of four words in the first sentence: “…once forbidden in schools…”

The truth is that HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE HAS NEVER BEEN MADE ILLEGAL OR SUPPRESSED IN WRITTEN PUBLICATIONS, NOR IN PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SPEECH OR PERFORMANCES; AND HAWAIIAN LANGUAGE HAS NEVER BEEN FORBIDDEN BY LAW IN SCHOOLS. An amendment to the compulsory attendance law was passed in 1896 to require that any public or private “school” must use English as the language for teaching all subjects in order for that school to be certified as meeting the requirement that all children must attend “school” — but the amendment did NOT forbid after-school or weekend academies from using Japanese or Hawaiian or any other language, and did not prohibit teaching language courses. Japanese parents created such Japanese language academies for their children to learn Japanese culture and history; but Hawaiian parents chose not to do that.

Why is it racially inflammatory to assert that Hawaiian language was illegal in daily life or forbidden in schools? Because today’s Hawaiian sovereignty activists have repeatedly and loudly made such claims as a way of portraying Native Hawaiians as victims entitled to reparations. The U.S. in general, and “haoles” (white people) in particular, are called colonial oppressors who suppressed native culture and even “made our native language illegal right here in our own homeland.” “My grandma told me she was beaten by her haole teacher for speaking Hawaiian in school.” For decades the activists claimed that Hawaiian language had been made illegal. When they were challenged to cite such a law, or to name even a single person who had been jailed for speaking Hawaiian, they could not do so. When it became publicly clear that dozens of Hawaiian language newspapers had been openly published continuously through 1948, and the Kamehameha song contest had been running since 1920 etc., a few professors of Hawaiian language nevertheless continued to insist the language had been made illegal. The claim of general illegality has been forced by the facts to retreat to a claim of the language being banned in school. But it is false, and still racially inflammatory, and must be completely discredited. Comes now the PBS-Hawaii “Insights” TV show with a panel of Hawaiian-language zealots accustomed to earning a living based partly on asserting the now-disproved lie, with the PBS-Hawaii corporate leadership acting as accomplices by giving them a megaphone. Hawaiian is a beautiful language that deserves to be preserved and to thrive as an important element of the culture which is the core of what makes Hawaii a special place. The beautiful language must be liberated from an ugly political demagoguery broadcasting a racially incendiary lie which serves only to foment racial resentment and hatred.

The Goebbels Award provides a copy of the warning to PHS-Hawaii and its executives demanding a correction of the falsehood, which included a summary of evidence that it is false, an explanation of why it is racially incendiary, and links to webpages where detailed proof of falsity can be found.

See the Goebbels Award to PBS-Hawaii and Leslie Wilcox at
http://tinyurl.com/yyqj247m

Was Hawaiian Language Illegal? Did the Evil Haoles Suppress Hawaiian Language As A Way of Oppressing Kanaka Maoli and Destroying Their Culture?
https://tinyurl.com/4gspl

Examples of published false claims that Hawaiian language was made illegal:
https://tinyurl.com/83xmb

Hawaii Dept of Education refused to correct the language-ban falsehood on its website and in its curriculum, and was given a Goebbels Award on April 25, 2016
https://tinyurl.com/z77ogbq

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Hawaii Legislature 2019 — Bills and Resolutions

Hawaii Legislature 2019 — Bills and Resolutions Related to Hawaiian Sovereignty and Racial Entitlement Programs. Text, testimony, and outcome.

A webpage provides complete information on 19 bills or resolutions for which Ken Conklin has submitted testimony as of February 10, 2019:
https://tinyurl.com/y4ou3cg8

The webpage will be updated continuously whenever a new item is introduced (there might be many more).

Examples:

SB1501 appropriates $439 Million tax dollars for DHHL for 2 years!

HB402/SB1363 gives OHA $139 Million to make up for alleged underpayment of 20% of ceded land revenues, and then $35 Million per year starting now.

SB195/SB642 requires that the Hawaiian version of a law be held binding if the law in question was originally drafted in Hawaiian and then translated into English. Requires that ‘okina and kahako be used, when appropriate, in documents prepared by or for state or county agencies or officials.

HB1119/SB1451 Reestablishes Kingdom holiday as a permanent annual official state holiday, November 28: La Ku’oko’a, which the bill calls “Hawaiian Recognition Day” although that has always been translated as, and will be perceived as, “Hawaiian Independence Day.”

More on the way!

The Hawaii legislature is in session each year from mid January to early May. Each year there are numerous bills and resolutions related to Hawaiian sovereignty and racial entitlement programs. For about 20 years Ken Conklin has been tracking such legislation, and submitting testimony. As of February 10, 2019 there are 19 different bills or resolutions on this topic for which committee hearings have been announced and for which Conklin has submitted testimony. There will probably be many more, and the webpage will be updated every time a new item gets a committee hearing (new RESOLUTIONS often get introduced later in the session, but a BILL will be treated as “new” only if it did not yet have a hearing). The count of 19 reflects completely different bills and resolutions, not counting the cloned companions in the other chamber, nor the amended versions sent by one committee to the next committee; all of which get Conklin’s revised and updated testimony reflecting amendments made along the way.

Some bills or resolutions have clones, called “companions”, which are introduced under different bill numbers in both the House and Senate. As the session goes forward, many committees make amendments before sending an item to the next committee or to the other chamber. After an item has passed all its committees in one chamber, then it gets sent to the other chamber where more committees consider it, and perhaps amend it. At the end of session a bill must be passed with exactly the same content in both chambers before it can pass out of the legislature to the Governor for his signature.

A webpage provides complete information on the 19 bills or resolutions for which Ken Conklin has submitted testimony as of February 10 2019:
https://tinyurl.com/y4ou3cg8

The webpage will be updated continuously whenever a new item gets a hearing (there might be many more). For each item Conklin’s webpage provides full text of Conklin’s testimony; a link to the Senate or House “status” webpage where the full text of the bill or resolution can be viewed, along with a file containing all the testimony submitted to each committee along the way on the item (sometimes dozens of people submit testimony), and a record of which Senators or Representatives voted which way on it, and the official committee report that accompanies the item as it gets sent to the next committee or to the full chamber. Conklin sends a revised version of his testimony to the next committee whenever an item gets amended before it goes to the next committee or to the chamber’s floor; but normally Conklin posts on his webpage only the first version of his testimony, unless there are major changes to the primary concepts.

The webpage also provides, at the bottom, a long list of links to Conklin’s similar webpages from previous years providing testimony from Conklin and others regarding bills and resolutions. That’s a useful resource for anyone wanting to analyze the trajectory of legislation and testimony on any particular issue. Some bills or resolutions that fail get re-introduced essentially unchanged in later years, repeatedly, like zombies or mummies in science fiction movies; other items get significantly revised by the people who write them and get them reintroduced; and some items that fail are allowed to stay dead. Which is which? Do your research!

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How Kamehameha School bribes other schools to be partners in racial segregation

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

A new webpage at
https://tinyurl.com/y8cny7ew
focuses on a diabolical technique whereby Kamehameha Schools (Bishop Estate) is now aggressively using its vast wealth (perhaps $15 BILLION) to enlist public and private schools and colleges as accomplices in racial segregation and also as partners in pushing race-supremacist curriculum not only to ethnic Hawaiian students but to all their students. Institutions in Hawaii and also mainland USA are being infected.

For about a century KSBE has ruthlessly enforced a policy of racial segregation in its admissions policy for full-time students from kindergarten through grade 12 on all of its campuses, except for a handful of students admitted to settle or forestall desegregation lawsuits. The funny thing is that the racist admissions policy is NOT required by the Will of founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop, and was not in place in the school’s early years — it is a policy adopted by the trustees for their own political reasons, presumably related to facilitating ethnic pride and ethnic nationalism.
Despite propaganda to the contrary, the Will of KSBE founder Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop does NOT require a policy that only racially-defined Native Hawaiians can attend — even the mere “preference” for “children of the aboriginal blood” as set forth in Pauahi’s Will applies only to orphans and indigents, who are a small portion of the students.

The vicious tenacity whereby KSBE maintains its segregationist policy is demonstrated by the fact that in May 2007 the trustees paid SEVEN MILLION DOLLARS plus admission with full tuition for grades 7-12 to settle one lawsuit by a single student moments before the U.S. Supreme Court was poised to take that student’s desegregation case which trustees rightly feared would result in striking down the admissions policy.

The importance the trustees place on the segregationist admissions policy is also demonstrated by a decision made by the trustees at the time when scandals were capturing public attention and the IRS was investigating the corporate entity regarding its tax exemption: the trustees decided that if the IRS ever notified KSBE that it must choose between its tax exemption, worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year, or its race-based admissions policy, the trustees would give up the tax exemption to protect racial segregation.

A new webpage focuses not on the admissions policy for Kamehameha School itself, but on a diabolical technique whereby KSBE has been enlisting public and private schools and colleges as partners in racial segregation and also as partners in pushing race-supremacist curriculum not only to ethnic Hawaiian students but to all their students.

This technique allows KSBE to infiltrate and subvert the admissions policies and curricula of other schools and colleges in Hawaii and mainland USA by matching the number of dollars those other schools set aside to provide scholarships for students to pursue majors in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) — but ONLY for students who have Hawaiian blood. Most private colleges and K-12 schools have relatively small endowments, and have a limited amount of money which they can set aside each year to provide scholarships to academically well-qualified students whose families are financially needy. When KSBE now makes contractual agreements with those schools to provide matching funds but only for ethnic Hawaiians, KSBE provides a strong incentive to those other schools to take scholarship money away from students who lack Hawaiian blood in order to get extra money from KSBE. Those other schools will now be enthusiastic to recruit ethnic Hawaiians but far less eager to recruit students of other ethnicities, and will divert their limited pot of scholarship money toward ethnic Hawaiians at the expense of other races.

KSBE’s sudden announcement in December 2018 that it is focusing on STEM subjects as those are taught in other schools and colleges coincides with an announcement by University of Hawaii that its Mathematics department is now a world leader in curriculum development and teacher certification in the field of ethnomath.

What is ethnomath? It is the description of how any particular culture, past or present, has used unique culture-based ways of estimating, counting, measuring, constructing buildings, describing natural phenomena, etc. Ethnomath might study how astronomy was used for practical purposes in astrology, navigation, planting and harvesting; and learning how some cultures had priests and princes who secretly anticipated eclipses and thereby inspired awe, fear, or political revolutions. Ethnomath might create lists of the names of the counting-numbers in different cultures; comparing Roman numerals with Arabic numbers, visiting merchants in Chinatown to watch them using an abacus, analyzing the ratios found in Egyptian pyramids, the human body, and the spirals of certain plants. Ethnomath might study the temperature and speed of water flowing through a taro patch to analyze how those factors affect the health and size of the kalo (corm) and length of the ha (stalk). In Hawaii ethnomath will certainly include descriptions of how navigators on the hugely celebrated voyaging canoe Hokule’a use the positions of the stars to “calculate” which way to point the boat.

To a casual observer, STEM subjects like mathematics, biology, technology, etc. would seem to have objective subject matter not corrupted by politics, emotions, and race. These subjects are also academically difficult and demanding. Genuine Mathematics involves abstract reasoning to prove theorems, solving equations, calculus, etc., unlike ethnomath which focuses on low-level measurement and description of tangible objects used in everyday cultural activities. STEM subjects attracted few ethnic Hawaiian students who were generally more interested in studying culture-based “soft subjects” like history, anthropology, or political science; and staging political rallies; rather than keeping their noses to the grindstone in the library.

Ethnomath is a way for racialists to finally be able to invade those parts of the liberal arts curriculum that were previously safe from identity politics. So it’s no wonder that the University of Hawaii, with its huge “Hawaiian Studies” program, is proud to boast of being a world leader in ethnomath. And KSBE is happy to provide matching grants for colleges in Hawaii and on the mainland to give racially exclusive scholarships for students to major in ethno-STEM.

The detailed new webpage is entitled “How Kamehameha School bribes other schools to be partners in racial segregation” and can be found at
https://tinyurl.com/y8cny7ew

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Proposed regulations for Mauna Kea, September 2018

On September 27, 2018 Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D. submitted testimony of 18 pages regarding proposed regulations for “Public and Commercial Activities on Mauna Kea Lands.” Conklin explains 4 fundamental principles of unity and equality, and applies them to criticize and improve the proposed regulations. Conklin’s complete testimony is at
https://tinyurl.com/y8vse4k2

Here are four fundamental principles for all issues related to Hawaiian sovereignty, which are also helpful for analyzing the proposed rules for Mauna Kea:
1. We are all equal in the eyes of God regardless of race.
2. All people, regardless of race, should be treated equally under the law by our government.
3. Unity with America: Hawaii is in fact the 50th State of the USA, whose laws rightfully have jurisdiction here.
4. Unity of Hawaii: The people and lands of Hawaii should remain unified under the single sovereignty of the State of Hawaii, and should not be divided along racial lines.

Two obvious conclusions for Mauna Kea rule-making can be derived from those fundamental principles. Many proposed rules should be improved to reflect these two conclusions. These conclusions motivate and underlie all the comments I have made about specific proposed rules.
(A) Every rule should apply equally to people of all races; there should be no racial set-asides or special privileges.
(B) If rule-makers believe Article 12 Section 7 of the Hawaii Constitution requires certain rights to be granted to one particular racial group, then the best way to fulfill that requirement is to grant those same rights to all Hawaii’s people regardless of race. There is legal precedent that a law requiring benefits for one racial group can be satisfied by granting those benefits to all persons regardless of race. Furthermore, the Aloha Spirit and the need for pono require such inclusiveness rather than racial exclusion.

Proposed rules for Mauna Kea analyzed by applying those principles and conclusions include the following topics:
*Mandatory orientation program for visitors;
*Fees charged to visitors;
*Traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians;
*Snowplay;
*Burials and scattering of cremated remains;
*Interference with government function;
*Racial set-asides or preferences;
*Access for religious or cultural purposes;
*Demographic characteristics of employees, volunteers, visitors deemed irrelevant

Conklin’s complete testimony is at
https://tinyurl.com/y8vse4k2

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Hirono (D,HI) v. Kavanaugh re Hawaiian racial entitlement programs and converting a racial group into a federally recognized tribe.

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

On Wednesday September 5, 2018 Senator Mazie Hirono (D, HI) was scheduled to have a half hour late in the afternoon (she has low seniority) to question Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the Judiciary committee confirmation hearing. Reporter Nick Grube was given information from Senator Hirono regarding the topics she intended to raise, and Grube’s article leaking that information was published in Honolulu Civil Beat [online newspaper] very early in the morning. Hirono is up for re-election this November, so of course she is grandstanding and this left-leaning online newspaper is happy to help her. The article, entitled “Brett Kavanaugh No Friend Of Special Rights For Native Hawaiians — Trump’s Supreme Court nominee once called the Office of Hawaiian Affairs a “naked racial spoils system.” is at
https://tinyurl.com/yae2osl8

Hirono’s entire 31 minute performance in the Wednesday committee hearing was later posted by her minions on YouTube at
https://tinyurl.com/y7z9u4ta
The portion devoted to Hawaiian racial entitlements, tribalism, and Rice v. Cayetano is in minutes #9:05 to 17:30 (the first 9 minutes were spent trying to embarrass Kavanaugh by asking whether he had ever sexually harassed women, and blaming him for failing to report 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinsky for doing so).

Brett Kavanaugh’s Wall Street Journal commentary: “Are Hawaiians Indians? The Justice Department Thinks So.” Wall St. J., Sept. 27, 1999, page A35 as archived by the online daily Indian compilation at “Turtle Talk” is at
https://tinyurl.com/ycugydcn

What’s this about “the justice department thinks so”? Remember that in 1999 Bill Clinton was at the end of his Presidency, and was sending high-level representatives from his Department of Justice and Department of Interior to hold “reconciliation” hearings in Hawaii, asking ethnic Hawaiians what goodies they would like from the federal government as part of the “reconciliation” called for in the apology resolution of 1993 (at the beginning of his Presidency). This was Clinton’s way of gearing up for the expected ruling in Rice v. Cayetano, which came in February 2000, and gearing up for introduction of the Akaka bill in the House and Senate in July 2000 as a way to overrule the Supreme Court.

Brett Kavanaugh, Robert Bork, and Roger Clegg jointly wrote an amicus brief in Rice v. Cayetano which was very influential in producing the 7-2 decision abolishing the portion of Hawaii’s Constitution that mandated racial segregation in Hawaii’s election of OHA trustees. Kavanaugh was the counsel of record. Everyone old enough will remember how Robert Bork got borked at his confirmation hearing for Supreme Court. Roger Clegg is now President and General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, where he worked for many years under the leadership of Linda Chavez; Clegg was helpful for many years in fighting the Akaka bill and Hawaii’s plethora of racial entitlement programs. The brief is very lengthy, filled with citations, and well-argued as you would expect from a nominee for Supreme Court. It’s available on findlaw, the free version of Lexis-Nexus, at
https://tinyurl.com/y8hwd7dh

Both of Judge Kavanaugh’s essays should be read by all the people of Hawaii, because they are powerful arguments against “Native Hawaiian” racial entitlement programs and the now-20-year effort to create a federally recognized Hawaiian tribe whose size could potentially now be 600,000 (one drop of the magic blood is enough to belong). The whole purpose of converting a racial group into an Indian tribe is to provide a legal basis for about a thousand currently existing racial entitlement programs to survive legal challenges under the 14th Amendment equal protection clause, and to increase this racial group’s political power and give them ownership of lands and corporations. Judge Kavanaugh’s essays are strong medicine against dividing the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines. For a compilation of many Hawaiian racial entitlement programs, see
https://tinyurl.com/zrfuy8k

Here is a compilation of all major articles opposing the Akaka bill (to create a Hawaiian tribe) which I updated continuously from year 2000 through 2014: The front page is an index broken into time periods; full text of each article is available in the subpages for the several time periods.
https://tinyurl.com/5eflp

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Multimillion dollar renovation of Thomas Square in Honolulu has secessionist and racial supremacist motives.

by Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.

July 31, 2018 was the 175th anniversary of a significant historical event in the Hawaiian Kingdom, when British Admiral Thomas landed at what is now called “Thomas Square” with a royal proclamation restoring sovereignty to King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III. To memorialize this anniversary a large portion of Thomas Square has undergone a major renovation which includes a huge floodlit statue of the King, an extremely tall flagpole where the Hawaiian Kingdom flag will fly 24 hours a day with no U.S. flag in sight, a very long 4-ft. tall wall with the King’s famous one-line comment etched in stone (sovereignty is preserved in righteousness), and a large cubical pile of lava rocks serving as an altar to the old Hawaiian gods.

Erecting the huge statue, flagpole, wall, and altar at Thomas Square has the same motives as erecting statues in Southern states decades after the Civil War to honor Confederate generals. The motives include resistance against U.S. military occupation, desire to restore status as a sovereign independent nation, and demands by one race for supremacy over the other races in a multiracial society.

On July 31, 1843 British Admiral Thomas landed at what is now called “Thomas Square” in Honolulu. He delivered to King Kauikeaouli Kamehameha III a British royal proclamation returning sovereignty to the King. 5 months previously a rogue British warship had trained its guns on Honolulu to demand payment of overdue bills owed by native chiefs to British merchants. When the King was unable to pay, the British commander foreclosed on the debts by collecting the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom as payment. The Hawaiian King suffered alcoholic depression. A petition to the British crown was secretly written by the King’s closest advisor, an American missionary medical doctor Gerrit Judd, who made the King sign it and who recruited an American sailor to deliver it. The restoration of sovereignty on July 31 produced a huge celebration, and the date became a Hawaiian Kingdom holiday.

Today’s Hawaiian secessionists want to rip the 50th star off the U.S. flag. They believe the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy on January 17, 1893 was caused by the landing of 162 U.S. peacekeepers sent ashore to protect American lives and property and prevent expected rioting and arson as royalists and revolutionaries clashed. 5 years after the “illegal overthrow” there was an “illegal annexation” of Hawaii to the U.S., and then in 1959 there was an “illegal plebiscite” whereby Hawaii agreed to become the 50th State.

Hawaiian sovereignty activists want to undo all that history. So today’s Hawaiian secessionists look to Sovereignty Restoration Day not only as the name of a historical event 175 years ago but also as the future they expect when United Nations enforcement of “international law” combines with U.S. military and economic weakness to once again restore Hawaii to its former status as an independent nation. Hawaiian racial supremacists cherish the thought of sovereignty restoration day in the same way as Southern white nationalists cherish their memories of Robert E. Lee. A statue went up in Honolulu for the same reasons the Confederate statues were erected in Charlottesville Virginia and other Southern towns.

For a deeper analysis, and compilation of news reports about Thomas Square, see this webpage:
https://tinyurl.com/y76ma2l7

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Kaniela Ing, Hawaii legislature committee chairman, unethically disappeared written testimony by the same author on two different bills on the same day.

Kaniela Ing is chairman of the State of Hawaii Legislature’s House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs during the regular session of 2017. His committee held hearings on many bills.

On Friday February 10 a notice was published that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on several bills. Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D., submitted written testimony on Friday regarding two of those bills, long before the deadline for submitting testimony 24 hours before a hearing. On Tuesday afternoon the public files of submitted testimony on those two bills were made available on the Legislature’s website. Dr. Conklin noticed that his testimony was missing from the files of testimony for both bills. Perhaps on rare occasions a clerk might make a mistake and inadvertently forget to include someone’s testimony. But what are the odds that two such mistakes might be made, on the same day, for two different bills, and in both cases the testimony was submitted by the same author!

Chairman Kaniela Ing’s motives are abundantly clear for disappearing Conklin’s written testimonies, because both of them were in strong opposition to Ing’s views.

One of those bills, whose sole introducer was Kaniela Ing, would enact into law a racial restriction on candidacy for election to a state government office. In year 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (Rice v. Cayetano) that it is unconstitutional to have a racial restriction on who can VOTE for OHA trustees. Later in year 2000 there was a followup lawsuit (Arakaki v. State of Hawaii) regarding the racial restriction on who can RUN as a candidate for OHA trustee. The U.S. District Court in Honolulu ruled that racial restrictions on candidacy are also unconstitutional; and that ruling was later upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Conklin’s testimony in opposition to this bill pointed out that chairman Ing is too young to remember the court decisions from 2000, but that’s no excuse for a committee chairman who should have access to legal advice before introducing a truly stupid bill.

On Tuesday night, after seeing that his testimony had been disappeared from the files on both bills, Dr. Conklin sent an email to Speaker of the House Joe Souki and all the other members of the House. The email provided attachments of each of the two disappeared testimonies so that House members could read them; complained about the censorship and requested that the testimonies be placed into the published files where they should have been all along; and asked for the perpetrator to be reprimanded. On Wednesday the testimony files for both bills had been updated with Conklin’s testimonies included.

Full text of Conklin’s email to Speaker Souki and the other 51 Representatives is copied below.

But even though the testimony files were corrected on Wednesday, major damage was already done by the suppression of the testimony from Friday through Tuesday. That’s because on Tuesday the committee made its decisions on the bills in the absence of the missing testimonies. The committee voted unanimously to pass the bill with the unconstitutional racial restriction still in it; and Conklin’s disappeared testimony was the only one warning about its unconstitutionality.

So there are two different ways to deal with committee chairman Kaniela Ing and with the members of his committee, depending on how responsibility is apportioned:

(A) If committee chairman Kaniela Ing had in fact prevented committee members from seeing Conklin’s testimony and if the members were unaware of the bill’s unconstitutionality, then Ing’s deception is responsible for committee members violating their oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States. In this case the committee has an obligation to (1) pass a motion of no-confidence in chairman Ing for deliberately misleading (i.e., lying to) them; and (2) ask the entire House to pass a resolution of censure against Ing for suppressing public testimony; and (3) to rescind the committee report and the referral advancing the bill to the next committee.

OR

(B) If the committee actually did have access to Conklin’s testimony before passing the amended version of the bill, or if any committee members were aware of the unconstitutionality even without reading Conklin’s testimony, then the committee members are just as guilty as Kaniela Ing for knowingly and intentionally passing an unconstitutional bill, in violation of their oath of office.

Three items follow: Conklin’s email to Speaker Souki and all representatives in the House; a blog posting that provides full text of the unconstitutional bill and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony on it; a blog posting that provides full text of the other bill on which Conklin’s testimony was disappeared.

———–

Email sent to Speaker Souki and all members of the State of Hawaii House of Representatives on Tuesday night, February 14, 2017:

Aloha Hawaii members of the House of Representatives,

Written testimony that I submitted on two different controversial bills has been suppressed. My testimony has been left out of the public files, probably because the committee chairman doesn’t like it. I don’t know whether the committee members were denied the chance to read my testimony, but for sure the public has not had a chance to see it. One of the bills actually contains a change to state law which would impose a racial restriction on candidacy in an election — a racial restriction which two federal courts previously ruled unconstitutional.

I have attached both testimonies to this email to be sure you can read them.

In both cases I submitted the testimony on Friday February 10, through the Legislature’s website, for a hearing to be held on Tuesday February 14. In both cases I immediately received the automated email confirmation that the testimony had been received. But on Tuesday February 14, when the files of testimony were posted on the bills’ status webpages, my testimonies were not included.

Censoring the record of public testimony should be regarded as a serious ethical offense, and should bring a reprimand to the person responsible for the censorship. The public files of testimony, for both bills, should be edited by inserting the disappeared testimony in the same place where it should have been originally published.

Perhaps a mistake or accident could account for one incident of disappeared testimony; but when there are two such disappeared testimonies, both by the same author and on the same day, it is clearly a matter of intentional censorship. If one of the testimonies might be suppressed because it could be regarded as disrespectful, there is no such excuse in relation to the other one.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs.

The bills are:

HB1297 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY. Provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law.

and

HB118, HD1 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN AFFAIRS. Amends the qualifications for election or appointment as an OHA Trustee to include that a person is not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.

My two testimonies are attached to this email.

Thank you for reading the testimonies and for demanding that they be included in the public files of testimony for the two bills.

Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D.
46-255 Kahuhipa St. Apt. 1205
Kane’ohe, HI 96744-6083
tel/fax (808) 247-7942
e-mail Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com

——————-

Blog containing full text of the bill HR118 that would enact a fully litigated unconstitutional racial restriction on who can run as a candidate for state government office, and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony

https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/2017/02/17/racialrestrictionconklintestimonydisappeared/

—————

Blog containing full text of the bill HB1297 which provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law, and full text of Conklin’s disappeared testimony

https://historymystery.kenconklin.org/2017/02/17/legislsupportdoitribeconklintestimonydisappeared/

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HB1297 about Hawaiian sovereignty; and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

On Friday February 10, 2017 a notice was published by the legislature of the State of Hawaii announcing that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on the bill HB1297. Text of the bill is copied below. On that same Friday February 10 Ken Conklin submitted testimony through the Legislature’s website, long ahead of the requirement that testimony must be submitted at least 24 hours before a hearing; and Conklin immediately received the robot-generated confirmation that the testimony had been received. Conklin’s testimony is copied below.

However, after the hearing was held and the public file of written testimony was posted on the Legislature’s “status” webpage for this bill, Conklin’s testimony was not included. Might the omission have been an accident? No! It was clearly not an accident, because exactly the same thing happened with Conklin’s testimony on a different bill, HB118-HD1, whose hearing was announced and held on the same dates, and in the same committee.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs. The chairman of the committee is Kaniela Ing, a youthful far-left Hawaiian sovereignty activist whose views might be described as supporting racial entitlement programs at taxpayer expense and race-based political sovereignty. Ing despises Conklin’s views, and the feeling is mutual. Conklin’s testimony was by far the strongest submitted, so it’s no surprise that Ing censored it. The vast majority of testimony was in opposition to the bill, but for reasons Mr. Ing would approve of — based on the assertion that Hawaii is not legitimately part of the United States.

Upon seeing that his testimony had been disappeared from the public files on two bills before the same committee, Conklin sent an email on Tuesday evening to Speaker of the House Joe Souki, and to all House members, providing copies of both of the disappeared testimonies; asking that they be inserted in the public files where they should have been all along; and asking that whoever was responsible for their censoring should be reprimanded. By Wednesday afternoon the public files of testimonies had been updated for both of the bills to include Conklin’s testimony, near the top, in the rightful place where it probably belonged in the order of when the testimonies were submitted.

The public file of testimony on this bill HB1297 is 749 pages long, occupying 162 Megabytes, takes many minutes to download even with high-speed internet, and is available at
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2017/Testimony/HB1297_TESTIMONY_OMH_02-14-17_.PDF

Here is full text of the bill

HB1297 RELATING TO HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY.
Provides that the State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people that complies with federal and state law.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:
SECTION 1. Chapter 27, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new part to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:
“PART . HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTY §27- Hawaiians; sovereignty; self-governance; state support. The State shall support a model of sovereignty and self-governance chosen by the Hawaiian people in a manner that comports with administrative rules and procedures established by the United States Department of the Interior and that complies with federal and state law.” SECTION 2. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

Here is full text of Ken Conklin’s TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

There is no historical, legal, or moral justification for race-based political sovereignty for ethnic Hawaiians.

Proposals to “reorganize” a Native Hawaiian governing entity are absurd, because there has never been such an entity in the history of Hawaii and therefore there is nothing to be reorganized. After a thousand years, the first time all the Hawaiian islands were organized under a single governing entity was in 1810 when Kamehameha The Great finally intimidated Kaua’i’s King Kaumuali’i to surrender without a fight, and merged his domain with all the rest of the islands which Kamehameha had conquered by force of arms. But the high chiefs in Kamehameha’s ruling government included the British Caucasian John Young as Governor of Kamehameha’s own home Hawaii Island — Young’s tomb is in Mauna Ala, the Royal Mausoleum, guarded with a pair of pulo’ulo’u (sacred taboo sticks), and is the only tomb there which is built in the shape of a miniature heiau; his bones are the oldest in Mauna Ala. British Caucasian Isaac Davis was Governor of O’ahu.

Here are four persuasive reasons why this bill should be defeated.

1. The bill pledges the State government to support whatever model of sovereignty is chosen by a racial group comprising 20% of Hawaii’s people, regardless whether the other 80% oppose it. That’s clearly not pono. A proposal to create an apartheid regime by dividing the lands and people of Hawaii along racial lines should not be endorsed by the legislature unless it is placed on the ballot in a general election under the same rules for approval as used for a state Constitutional amendment. But even in the unlikely event that such a proposal gets ratified by the people, it is clearly contrary to the U.S. Constitution and would likely be overruled by the courts.

2. Numerous scientific surveys show that a majority of Hawaii’s people — including probably a majority of “Native Hawaiians” — oppose this idea. The most reliable and credible surveys were done by nationally esteemed professional public opinion survey companies, including Zogby, headquartered outside Hawaii and thus insulated from propaganda generated by OHA and not beholden to OHA or Kamehameha Schools for lucrative contracts. Even when polls were done by local newspapers or by OHA, over a period of years, the results consistently show that “Native Hawaiians” have the same ranking of priorities as the general population — top priorities are education, healthcare, housing, the environment, and traffic. The lowest priorities are Native Hawaiian rights, race-based handouts — and, lowest of all — ethnic Hawaiian “nationhood” (i.e., the Akaka bill or administrative rule-making to create a Hawaiian tribe). For a compilation of information and links to survey results, see pages 29-34 in Ken Conklin’s “Testimony regarding RIN 1090–AB05” at
http://big09.angelfire.com/ ConklinTestmnyDOI081514RulesChangeHawnTribe.pdf

3. There have been perhaps a thousand news reports and commentaries over the years from 2000 through 2014 opposing the Akaka bill and, more recently, opposing the Department of Interior regulation for creating a Hawaiian tribe. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights spoke loud and clear against the Akaka bill in 2006 and 2009; and in September 2013 four Commissioners sent a letter to President Obama warning that it would be unconstitutional to use administrative rulemaking or executive order to create a Hawaiian tribe and give it federal recognition. In 2001 and 2005 the House Committee on Judiciary, and its subcommittee on the Constitution, took the unusual step of publicly opposing the Akaka bill even though a different committee had jurisdiction over “Indian” legislation. Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein published several articles opposing the Akaka bill, some of which were republished in the Congressional Record at the request of Senator Jon Kyl. Mr. Fein also wrote a monograph “Hawaii Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.” Mr. Fein’s essay is of special interest to scholars because of his analysis of the apology resolution of 1993 as well as the provisions of the Akaka bill. Full text of these items has been compiled over the years, including U.S. Commission on Civil Rights letters on official letterhead. A master index provides lists and links for specific time periods. See
http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty/ AkakaPublishedOpposition.html

4. During February 2016 a monthlong meeting was held on O’ahu in which unelected “Native Hawaiians” who had been candidates in an attempted election run by a group called Na’i Aupuni wrote a proposed constitution for a “Native Hawaiian” nation. They wrote it with the specific intention that it would meet the requirements of the Department of Interior “final rule” for creating a Hawaiian tribe.

Right up front in your face, the preamble says “we join together to affirm a government of, by, and for Native Hawaiian people” [i.e., of the race, by the race, and for the race], and “affirm our ancestral [i.e., race-based] rights and Kuleana to all lands, waters, and resources of our islands and surrounding seas.” [i.e., we’re gonna take over the whole place, just like Kamehameha did, who was known as “Ka Na’i Aupuni” — the conqueror.] “We reaffirm the National Sovereignty of the Nation. We reserve all rights to Sovereignty and Self-determination, including the pursuit of independence. Our highest aspirations are set upon the promise of our unity and this Constitution.”

The plain language in the preamble is the declaration of a race-war from a gathering blatantly labeled “Na’i Aupuni” which means “Conquest.”

In case there’s any doubt about fascist racial exclusivity, Article 2 — Citizenship — says “A citizen of the Native Hawaiian Nation is any descendant of the aboriginal and indigenous people who, prior to 1778, occupied and exercised sovereignty in the Hawaiian Islands and is enrolled in the nation.” Article 7, Section 4 reaffirms the religious belief that ethnic Hawaiians have a genealogical relationship with the islands, saying “The Nation has a right, duty, and kuleana, both individually and collectively, to sustain the ‘Aina (land, kai, wai, air) as an ancestor, source of mana, and source of life and well-being for present and future generations. And Article 8 says “The Government shall not … Make any law with intent to suppress traditional Native Hawaiian religion or beliefs.”

What will happen to the 80% of Hawaii’s current population who do not have any Hawaiian native blood? Perhaps the same thing that happened to the vast majority of the indigenous Africans when small minorities of Caucasians took over the governments of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa.

Full text of the proposed constitution is at
http://big09.angelfire.com/NatHwnConstitAdopt022616.pdf

Is this the sort of Hawaiian tribe which our legislature wants to go on record as supporting? God help us!

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HB118 enacting racial restriction on running for office, and Ken Conklin’s testimony which committee chairman Kaniela Ing disappeared.

On Friday February 10, 2017 a notice was published by the legislature of the State of Hawaii announcing that a hearing would be held on Tuesday February 14 on the bill HB118-HD1. Text of the bill is copied below. On that same Friday February 10 Ken Conklin submitted testimony through the Legislature’s website, long ahead of the requirement that testimony must be submitted at least 24 hours before a hearing; and Conklin immediately received the robot-generated confirmation that the testimony had been received. Conklin’s testimony is copied below.

However, after the hearing was held and the public file of written testimony was posted on the Legislature’s “status” webpage for this bill, Conklin’s testimony was not included. Might the omission have been an accident? No! It was clearly not an accident, because exactly the same thing happened with Conklin’s testimony on a different bill, HB1297, whose hearing was announced and held on the same dates, and in the same committee.

The committee is the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources, and Hawaiian Affairs. The chairman of the committee is Kaniela Ing, a youthful far-left Hawaiian sovereignty activist whose views might be described as supporting race-based political sovereignty and racial entitlement programs at taxpayer expense. Ing despises Conklin’s views, and the feeling is mutual. Conklin’s testimony was by far the strongest submitted, so it’s no surprise that Ing censored it.

The bill HB118-HD1 has two main purposes corresponding to the committee chairman’s personal vendetta against an honorable man and the chairman’s racialist viewpoint. (1) The primary purpose is to single out a newly elected board member of the State of Hawaii Office of Hawaiian Affairs and make it illegal for him to serve on or be a candidate for the board. The bill has the appearance of being a good-government bill intended to prohibit the election of anyone who is a registered lobbyist. But in fact there is only one person now serving on the OHA board or who was recently a candidate for the board who is a registered lobbyist. He just happens to be the head of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, a genuine good-government think tank; and in that capacity he occasionally lobbies the legislature seeking government transparency and accountability, offering libertarian analysis of economic issues, etc. He is an opponent of race-based political sovereignty for ethnic Hawaiians — a policy which OHA has spent tens of millions of dollars and seventeen years supporting — a policy which the chairman of the legislature’s committee on Hawaiian Affairs also supports. The committee chairman, in cahoots with a group of Hawaiian racialist institutions, therefore launched a vendetta to oust the newly elected OHA board member, and is using the issue of being a “lobbyist” as a way to pursue their vendetta. (2) The committee chairman also inserted into the bill another provision, in line with his racialist views, which would impose a racial requirement that candidates for election or appointment to the board must be racially Hawaiian. But that requirement, which was formerly a part of the Hawaii state Constitution, was ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000. Either the committee chairman is too young to know the history of that event and has no advisor to tell him about it; or else he does know the racial restriction on candidacy is unconstitutional but nevertheless he recklessly wants to enact it.

Nearly all the testimony was in support of the bill. Conklin’s was the ONLY testimony that made any mention of the unconstitutionality of the bill’s racial restriction on candidacy for the OHA board; so by disappearing Conklin’s testimony the chairman and the entire committee could safely claim to be unaware of it. Nearly all the testimonies were very brief and merely supported the fake purpose of getting rid of lobbyists as though that was the real purpose of the bill; but the two testimonies placed all the way at the bottom of a very long file of testimonies make it clear that the bill’s primary purpose is a vendetta against the newly elected OHA board member who opposes racialism and seeks an audit of the board’s corrupt contracting and expenditures.

Upon seeing that his testimony had been disappeared from the public files on two bills before the same committee, Conklin sent an email on Tuesday evening to Speaker of the House Joe Souki, and to all House members, providing copies of both of the disappeared testimonies; asking that they be inserted in the public files where they should have been all along; and asking that whoever was responsible for their censoring should be reprimanded. By Wednesday afternoon the public files of testimonies had been updated for both of the bills to include Conklin’s testimony, near the top, in the rightful place where it probably belonged in the order of when the testimonies were submitted.

The “status file” for this bill, posted on the Legislature’s website, shows that on Tuesday February 14, with Conklin’s testimony still missing from the public file and perhaps therefore also not being seen by the committee members, the committee “recommend that the measure be PASSED, WITH AMENDMENTS. The votes were as follows: 7 Ayes: Representative(s) Ing, Gates, Creagan, DeCoite, LoPresti, Takayama, Thielen; Ayes with reservations: none; Noes: none; and Excused: none.”

Then on Friday February 17 the status file says “Reported from OMH (Stand. Com. Rep. No. 510) as amended in HD 2, recommending passage on Second Reading and referral to JUD.”

Putting together the status reports for Tuesday February 14 and Friday February 17, it’s clear that the bill was amended and the amended bill HD2 was approved by the committee on Tuesday. At that time Conklin’s testimony was not included in the public file and probably had not been made available to the members of the committee because the chairman had disappeared it. But Conklin’s was the only testimony pointing out that the racial restriction on OHA candidacy had been ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000. So there are two possibilities:

(A) If committee chairman Kaniela Ing had in fact prevented committee members from seeing Conklin’s testimony and if the members were unaware of the bill’s unconstitutionality, then Ing’s deception is responsible for committee members violating their oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States. In this case the committee has an obligation to (1) pass a motion of no-confidence in chairman Ing for deliberately misleading (i.e., lying to) them; and (2) ask the entire House to pass a resolution of censure against Ing for suppressing public testimony; and (3) to rescind the committee report and the referral advancing the bill to the next committee.

OR

(B) If the committee actually did have access to Conklin’s testimony before passing the amended version of the bill, or if any committee members were aware of the unconstitutionality even without reading Conklin’s testimony, then the committee members are just as guilty as Kaniela Ing for knowingly and intentionally passing an unconstitutional bill, in violation of their oath of office.

The public file of testimony on this bill HB118-HD1 is 128 pages long, occupying 55 Megabytes, takes a couple minutes to download even with high-speed internet, and is available at
http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/Session2017/Testimony/HB118_HD1_TESTIMONY_OMH_02-14-17_.PDF

—————

Here is full text of the first version of the bill HB118-HD1 (first version other than the short-form content-free placeholder bill which this version HD1 filled with content) on which testimony was submitted:

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. Section 13D-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:

Ҥ13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

SECTION 2. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.
SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

————–

Here is full text of the amended version HB118-HD2 approved by the committee on Tuesday February 14, 2017 — very tiny changes not affecting either the personal vendetta or the unconstitutional racial restriction on candidacy.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:

SECTION 1. Section 13D-2, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended to read as follows:
Ҥ13D-2 Qualifications of board members. No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and is:
(1) [qualified] Qualified and registered to vote under the provisions of section 13D-3[, and];
(2) [where residency on a particular island is a requirement, a] A resident on the island for which seat the person is seeking election or appointment[.], if residency on a particular island is a requirement; and
(3) Not currently registered as a lobbyist with the state ethics commission.
No member of the board shall hold or be a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments in accordance with Article II, section 7 of the Constitution of the State; nor shall a person be eligible for election or appointment to the board if that person is also a candidate for any other public office under the state or county governments. The term “public office”, for purposes of this section, shall not include notaries public, reserve police officers, or officers of emergency organizations for civilian defense or disaster, or disaster relief.”

SECTION 2. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.
SECTION 3. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

————–

Here is full text of Ken Conklin’s testimony on the first version of the bill, HB118-HD1. This testimony was either hidden from committee members by chairman Kaniela Ing, or else committee members had access to it and chose to ignore it when they approved a bill whose racial restriction on candidacy was ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts in year 2000:

TESTIMONY IN OPPOSITION

I’ll begin my testimony to a committee on Hawaiian affairs with a sentence in Hawaiian language.

Hupo loa ke kanaka po’o o keia komike, i ho’okomo i keia pila HB 118 HD1.

Although this hearing is set for Valentines Day, I have no love for this bill nor for its sponsor. Who is to blame for this bad bill?

The chairman of this committee is, shall we say, badly misguided for introducing this bill, whose contents display an astounding level of ignorance about the history of litigation regarding candidacy for OHA trustees.

One of the major provisions in this bill is flat-out unconstitutional — a fact litigated and ruled by two federal courts. The other major provision might also be unconstitutional, although it has not yet been litigated; but it is certainly immoral if not illegal.

The following members of this committee also deserve blame for rubber-stamping this bill when they voted on February 3 and February 7 to pass this bill as amended: Ing, Gates, Creagan, DeCoite, LoPresti, Takayama, Thielen; no Noes and no reservations. You committee members really must exercise greater vigilance in monitoring the work of your very youthful and reckless chairman. He might be excused because the massively publicized litigation on this issue happened when he was a mere prepubescent boy; but if he’s going to be a committee chairman then he should compensate by having a knowledgeable advisor. Most committee members have no such excuse — if you’re older than 40 and have lived in Hawaii for at least 18 years then you will surely remember the tumultuous events of year 2000.

What’s one major bad thing about this bill?

Lines 3,4,5 on page 1 say “No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the board unless the person is Hawaiian and …”

That racial restriction on candidacy has been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. District Court in Honolulu and by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Of course this committee could rescue that provision by redefining the word “Hawaiian” to mean “citizen of Hawaii” rather than the racially exclusionary meaning requiring at least one drop of Hawaiian native blood.

I would welcome such a redefinition. Please do it! But of course you won’t; so let me continue. Here’s the story.

In year 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court by vote of 7-2 ruled in Rice v. Cayetano that there can be no racial restriction on who can vote in the election for OHA trustees.
Later in year 2000 the U.S. District Court in Honolulu, Judge Helen Gillmor presiding, ruled that there can be no racial restriction on who can run as a candidate for OHA trustee. The case was CV 00-00514 HG-BMK Arakaki et. al. vs. State of Hawaii et. al, and OHA as intervenor. I was honored to be among the multiracial group of 13 plaintiffs including 3 Native Hawaiians. We won.

Governor Cayetano ousted all nine OHA trustees on grounds they had been illegally elected. In the election of November 2000 I ran as a candidate for OHA trustee, along with 95 other candidates for the 9 seats. There were at least a dozen so-called “non-Hawaiians” [Hawaii citizens with no native blood] among the 96 candidates; and one of them, Charles Ota, won the Maui seat.

Judge Gillmor’s civil rights racial desegregation decision was appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and was upheld by the three-judge panel, with the final judgment filed on July 1, 2003 by Honolulu clerk Walter Chinn.

The judgment concludes: “… The State is ordered to permit otherwise qualified non-Hawaiians to run for office and to serve, if elected, as trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Section 5 of Article XII of the State Constitution and HRS § 13D-2 violate the Fifteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act, to the extent that they require persons running for OHA trustee positions and serving, if elected, to be Hawaiian.”
What’s the other thing wrong with this bill?

The other major new provision of this bill might very well also be unconstitutional. It says “No person shall be eligible for election or appointment to the [OHA] board unless the person is … Not registered as a lobbyist within one year of filing nomination papers.”
To the best of my knowledge there is only one person serving as an OHA trustee or who was recently a candidate for OHA trustee who would be no longer eligible to be OHA trustee under provisions of this bill. I guess your committee chairman has a vendetta against him, and is (ab)using his power as a committee chairman to pursue that vendetta.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution says “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution says “The Constitution prohibits both the federal government (in this clause) and the states (in Article I, Section 10, Clause 1) from passing either bills of attainder or ex post facto laws. The Framers considered freedom from bills of attainder and ex post facto laws so important that these are the only two individual liberties that the original Constitution protects from both federal and state intrusion. As James Madison said in The Federalist No. 44, “Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation.”

So even if this bill might somehow escape being ruled unconstitutional as a bill of attainder, it would clearly not be able to oust the victim of your chairman’s vendetta from his OHA trustee position where he will serve for nearly four more years; because passing this bill after the victim has already been elected and is serving would be an “ex-post- facto” law.

My dear committee members: Does this testimony seem disrespectful? Then consider where the disrespect originated. Introducing this bill, with a major provision already ruled unconstitutional, is disrespectful to the judiciary. Advancing this bill is disrespectful to the oath all legislators take to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Using the power of a legislature’s committee chairman or member to press a vendetta attempting to oust an elected official without impeachment and trial on charges of misbehavior, or denying voters the right to decide whether a candidate should be elected despite what some might regard as flaws, is disrespectful to the will of the public who elected him and disrespectful to the whole concept of democracy and due process.

Trash this bill. It has already tarnished your reputations, but you can mitigate the damage.

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