David C. Farmer, Trustee vs. Harmon

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

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DEFENDANT’S WITNESS

BRIAN SCHATZ

Former Hawaii State Representative (D) from 1998 to 2006; board member for the Sierra Club; candidate for Chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii.

Email: teamschatz@gmail.com
Website: www.brianschatz.com

From wikipedia:

Brian Schatz grew up in Hawaii, attending Punahou School there followed by a B.A. in Philosophy from Pomona College in Claremont, California. While at Pamona, Schatz also spent a term studying in Kenya as part of the International Training Program, where Schatz developed skills as a public servant.

After returning to Hawaii, Schatz taught at Punahou School before moving into the non-profit sector. Schatz currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Helping Hands Hawaii, one of Oahu's largest nonprofit social service agencies.

Brian Schatz is married to Linda Kwok Kai Yun Schatz and has one son, Tyler.

Political Career:

Brian E. Schatz was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives in 1998 to represent the 25th District (Makiki/Tantalus), one of the densest and most diverse areas of urban Honolulu. While in the House, Schatz served as Chair of the Economic Development and Business Committee, Vice-Chair of Consumer Protection and Commerce, Vice-Chair of Water, Land and Ocean Resources, and as a member of the Hawaiian Affairs, Higher Education, Energy and Environmental Protection, and Agriculture Committees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_E._Schatz

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April 13, 2008

BRIAN SCHATZ ANNOUNCES BID FOR
CHAIRMANSHIP OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF HAWAII

Brian Schatz officially announces his candidacy for Chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii.

February 19 was an extraordinary event in Hawaii's political history - with 37,000 people participating and tens of thousands of new members of the Democratic Party,” Schatz states. “Our job as a Party is to make sure that this was not a one-time phenomenon, but rather the beginning of a resurgence in grassroots political activity in Hawaii. In order to make this as meaningful as it can be, we have to engage these members of the Party - give them ways to participate, financially, politically, and legislatively. They have to know that we need their involvement, and they have to be shown how their actions can make a difference.

Schatz continues, “The Party has some serious financial challenges. I'm familiar with the difficulties of funding political operations and nonprofits, so one of our goals must be long-term solvency, fiscal prudence, and financial sustainability. It's a change year, and it's a change election, and the Democrats are in the best position to deliver change for Hawaii.”

Schatz served on the Democratic Party State Central Committee from 1997 to 1998, and was a member of the State Legislature from 1998 to 2006, where he helped pass meaningful legislation in the areas of education, the environment and the economy....

Schatz’s more notable achievements as a State Legislator include:

...Passing the Legacy Lands Act, which helped to save Waimea Valley and other special areas across the state;

Passing Act 221, which provided more than 9,000 high tech jobs, with an average salary of $50,000;...

In 2006, Schatz gave up his state house seat to run for the 2nd U.S. Congressional District, vacated by Representative Ed Case.

Since 2007, Schatz has served as the official spokesperson for Hawaii for Obama. Schatz currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Helping Hands Hawaii, one of Hawaii’s largest nonprofit social service agencies.

The election for party chair will be held during the Democratic Party of Hawaii State Convention on May 23-25, 2008.

Contact: A.J. Halagao, Campaign Manager
Telephone: 808-225-5112

Email: teamschatz@gmail.com
Website: www.brianschatz.com

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NEW DISCOVERY (04-22-08): David Farmer’s undisclosed connections with AIPAC and Brian Schatz:

From Exhibit: “CONNECTING THE DIRTY DOTS TO AIPAC”:

David C. Farmer, Successor-Trustee vs. Harmon

(Formerly Woo vs. Harmon & Nicholson vs. Harmon)

CV05-00030 DAE KSC

U.S. District Court For the District of Hawaii

Judges: David A. Ezra; Kevin S. Chang

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DEFENDANT’S EXHIBIT

—

A few words of explanation:

In his "MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO DEBTOR'S MOTION FOR ORDER TO DISAPPROVE APPOINTMENT OF DAVID C. FARMER AS SUCCESSOR TRUSTEE", filed with the Court on August 24, 2007, the Trustee's attorney, Steven Guttman, Esq., of the law firm, Kessner Umebayashi Bain & Matsunaga, stated to the Court:

"... Harmon is once again attempting to create issues of conflict where none exist by attempting to draw connections between phantom dots."...

Mr. Guttman does not elaborate beyond this simple statement of HIS PERSONAL OPINION, as to WHICH of the thousands of connections I have cited that he wishes the Court to accept, without question, as being merely "phantom dots". In other court filings, Mr. Guttman has characterized my Motions as consisting of "conspiracy theories" -- again with no specific references.

Despite these unnamed "phantom dots" and "conspiracy theories", the Court has blithely and unquestionably gone along with Mr. Guttman's opinions and has repeatedly denied ALL Motions that I have made. In fact, both Courts involved have ruled that the Court Clerk shall not accept any future filings from me without the Courts' prior approval - which it has repeatedly declined to give.

Therefore, due to the fact that I continue to discover new, material FACTS almost daily, I am preparing a set of NEW EXHIBITS in which I intend to document the financial, professional, personal, and political connections between the many various entities involved in this case.

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The following is a listing of named witnesses in this case who have factual connections with the subject entity. Each underlined name has been linked to a detailed description of that witness to enable the reader to more easily CONNECT THE DOTS TO...

Judith Neustadter Fuqua

James B. “Jim” Nicholson

Dan Inouye

LEARN MORE ABOUT AIPAC:

http://www.stopaipac.org/

http://www.stopaipac.org/spystory.htm

http://jews4obama2008.wordpress.com/

www.hadassah.org/education/content/influentials_israel.asp

http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/021108/hawaii.shtml

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1721.htm

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2007/06/lfow.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=AIPAC

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/03/6138/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zidtiC-UPNU

http://www.franklingate.com/aipac-cheney.htm

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Obama.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Bush-Abramoff-Greenberg.mht

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Mische-7-11-7.mht

http://youtube.com/watch?v=vwV6O5AGKyw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gHmJUa720

http://ifamericaknew.com/us_ints/mc-aipac.html

http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=9697

www.literarylotus.com/2007/12/wimr-brian-schatz.html

http://www.kycbs.net/AIPAC-Lingle-Abramoff-Brownstein.mht

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NEW DISCOVERY (04-15-08):

Connecting the dots...

David Farmer...Steven Guttman...Brian Schatz...Barack Obama...Oprah Winfrey...Hillary Clinton...Linda Lingle...John McCain....AIPAC...Punahou School...Kamehameha Schools...Dee Jay Mailer...The Global Fund...Henry Paulson...George W. Bush...Haunani Apoliona...OHA...Daniel Akaka...Dan Inouye...Ben Cayetano...John Waihee...Suzanne Case...Dan Case...Steve Case...Jeffrey Case...Aon...The Nature Conservancy...Greg Dunn...Judith Neustadter Fuqua...Patricia Case...Joey Caldarone...etc...ad infinitum...

http://www.midweek.com/content/paina/image_full/2090/

http://www.greatergoodtelevision.com/gallery/v/RadioGuests/

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NEW DISCOVERY (04-16-08):

March 22, 2008

Price of Apology: Clinton, Obama, and
the Hawaiian Quid Pro Quo

The bill to create a Hawaiian Indian reservation is a financial boondoggle. But state bigwigs hope contributions will persuade Obama or Clinton to sign it if elected.

by Andrew Walden

With Tony Rezko on trial, the national media is beginning to skim the surface of the dirty deals paving the rapid ascent of Democratic presidential frontrunner Barack Obama. But Chicago, Syria, and Iraq are not the only places to look. There is also a $9-billion story in Hawaii and in spite of Obama’s recent 3-1 victory in the Hawaii Democratic caucuses, both Obama and Clinton are still clawing for the prize.

Obama’s Hawaii supporters sought to leverage the limited contribution pool of their small state by latching on early. Calling Obama “Hawaii’s third senator”, they began raising early money for a presidential bid as soon as Obama won his Illinois Senate seat in 2004. But of course they want something in return. At the top of their agenda in discussions with Obama in December 2004 was the multi-billion-dollar tropical land and money grab which would be made possible by passage of the so-called Akaka Bill.

Congress is now considering another “Apology Resolution” — for American Indians. The degree to which the Hawaiian Apology Resolution and the fight for the Akaka Bill have distorted the presidential race should be a sharp warning against passage. The Indian Apology Resolution is amended to S 1200 by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS). The House version is contained in House Joint Resolution 68 being pushed by Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK).

The Akaka Bill (Senate Bill 310 and House Bill 505) would create a Hawaiian Indian reservation. Its backers claim they are righting historical wrongs done to Hawaiians. Its opponents claim the Akaka Bill is racially discriminatory. Both groups miss the point. A more accurate assessment comes from the Akaka Bill’s chief proponent in the House of Representatives, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Honolulu). Abercrombie explained to the House Committee on Natural Resources on May 2, 2007, “The bottom line here is that this is a bill about the control of assets. This is about land, this is about money, and this is about who has the administrative authority and responsibility over it.”

The bill in different forms has passed the House several times since 2000 — most recently on October 24, 2007. It is now again before the Senate after coming up four votes short in 2006.

Contrary to popular opinion, Indian reservations have a history in Hawaii. An Oct. 12, 1999, article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin describes the 1995 efforts by corrupt trustees controlling America’s largest charitable trust — Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate (KSBE) — to evade state and federal oversight. And not without reason: trustees’ salaries were over $1 million per year. KSBE money, along with trustees’ personal funds, had been invested in a pornographic website. Spending on the Kamehameha School was being cut. One trustee was running rampant in the school, micromanaging teachers and administrators. The trustees’ self-dealing and their investments with Goldman Sachs — at the time headed by current New Jersey Democratic Governor John Corzine — had brought losses of $264 million in 1994 alone. Investigators were starting to ask questions. Hawaiians were beginning to protest. The trustees’ plan? Get the IRS and the state attorney general off their backs by moving KSBE’s legal domicile to an Indian reservation.

The Star-Bulletin on October 12, 1999, explains:

Verner Liipfert, whose local office was at the time headed by former Gov. John Waihee, identified the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation as the top relocation prospect.…

Gregg Bourland, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal council … said there is good reason for an entity like the Bishop Estate to make inquiries about changing its domicile to the South Dakota reservation.…

Since the 1800s, the Cheyenne River Sioux have had a government-to-government relationship with the United States, which allows them to operate their own police force, court system, and legislative functions.

It would be politically impossible to remove KSBE — the estate of Hawaiian Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop — from Hawaii. Nothing ever came of the effort and it remains a little-noted footnote in recent Hawaii history. By 1999 state and IRS investigations and protests by native Hawaiians forced the removal of all five trustees. The affair became known as “Broken Trust” and is the topic of a Hawaii best-selling book of the same name.

Within a few months of the trustees’ ouster, the first version of the Akaka Bill was introduced into the U.S. House and Senate. Sen. Akaka, who introduced his namesake bill in the U.S. Senate, had for years been a low-key defender of the corrupt trustees. Rep. Abercrombie, who introduced the House version of the Akaka Bill, had been a close associate of disgraced KSBE trustee Dickie Wong. If the trustees could not move KSBE to an Indian reservation, they were going to build an Indian reservation around themselves.

When Obama was a longshot, his valuable early-money Hawaii support came from a group of Democrat politicos including Waihee cronies, officers of Hawaiian Electric — a company deeply interconnected with KSBE — Abercrombie, failed Democrat congressional candidate Brian Schatz, and all coordinated by Andy Winer, former chief of Senator Daniel Akaka’s 2006 campaign.

Their effort closely parallels the high-risk/high-reward gamble Waihee took as an early-money backer of Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 bid for the White House. But the “old boys” have all their bases covered. Although Waihee cronies are prominent among Obama backers, Waihee himself is still loyal to Clinton, as is Hawaii’s senior senator Daniel Inouye (D). Hawaii’s other two representatives, Senator Akaka and Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-rural Hawaii), are remaining neutral until the dust clears.

As told in the 1997 PBS Frontline special “The Fixers,” the story of Clinton’s Hawaii early-money support begins in the late 1980s and early 1990s with poor Hawaiian farmers’ leasehold homes being bulldozed and cattle being slaughtered as Honolulu police stand by with fraudulent eviction notices. The evictions made way for the Maunawili Valley Oahu golf course funded by Japanese investors overflowing with yen at the top of Japan’s bubble economy.

The Maunawili Valley deal was the beginning of a long run for Waihee “fixers” Gene and Nora Lum. They bought support for the project in the Hawaii state legislature with $50,000 in contributions. Governor Waihee’s 1985 signature on the Lums’ bill declaring golf courses to be a legitimate use of agricultural land raised the value of the Maunawili property by about $43 million overnight.

Within a few years the Lums were recruited by Ron Brown — later named Clinton’s commerce secretary — to spearhead efforts to raise Clinton donations from Asian sources. Their gamble on Clinton’s candidacy even as the Maunawili evictions were ongoing in 1990 and 1991 raised thousands from Waihee associates.

PBS “The Fixers” ends with President Clinton in 1996, ten days after winning his second presidential term, stopping in Honolulu on his way to Asia and insisting on playing a full 18 holes of golf with Waihee in the pouring rain on the Maunawili Valley course where it all started.

The Lums ended up in prison in 1997, but backing Clinton paid off handsomely for Waihee and his cronies. Clinton in 1993 signed the so-called “Apology Resolution,” which fixes a single government-dictated interpretation of history and formally admits a U.S. role in the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. It also apologizes for the overthrow, thus implicitly placing Hawaii statehood in question and making the U.S. liable to native Hawaiians — or more accurately, to those who claim to represent them.

The Apology Resolution, in 1993 dishonestly pitched to Congress by Senator Daniel Inouye as “a simple resolution of apology,” has over the years provided the justification for politically motivated intimidation by gangs of thugs and for connected Hawaii political operators to capture ownership of tens of thousands of acres and rake in millions operating lucrative state and federally funded programs, and even private companies pretending to benefit native Hawaiians by claiming to address what Congress and President Clinton had admitted were past wrongs.

One deal alone, Sandwich Isles Communications, got $500 million in federal funds to provide nearly useless fiber optic connections to tens of thousands of Hawaiian Homelands residential lots — most of which are undeveloped. Costs are estimated at $278,000 per utilized connection.

The Hawaii state legislature is now considering handing over even more valuable shoreline acreage to the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) this session. Meanwhile, rising real estate costs are driving native Hawaiian families to live in tents on the beach. Last year ten thousand locals left Hawaii for opportunity on the mainland. About half of native Hawaiians are gone from the state. One might ask just what does it take to drive people out of Hawaii? At a recent OHA public hearing in Hilo, protesters gave a partial answer by shouting and carrying signs demanding: “OHA stop stealing from Hawaiians.”

But Sandwich Isles is small potatoes compared with the operations potentially enabled under a highly sovereign Hawaiian tribal government with government-to-government relations modeled on those of the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation. Not only could such a government shield trustees of KSBE from state and federal oversight, but it could also end up owning anywhere from 10% to 40% of Hawaii’s highly valuable real estate under the formulas being discussed.

The Apology Resolution is the cornerstone of the case for the Akaka Bill, despite Sen. Akaka’s floor statement during the 1993 debate: “Are Native Hawaiians Native Americans? This resolution has nothing to do with that.” In fact the record of the very short 1993 Senate debate contains a point-by-point litany of denials from Akaka and Inouye of almost everything which has since come to pass.

Just as the Apology Resolution was the return favor given to Hawaii Democrats by Clinton for their early-money support, Hawaii early-money supporters of Obama are hoping that a President Obama would be quick to repay the support they gave him when he was a long shot by signing the Akaka Bill. Obama has pledged to sign the Akaka Bill in order to “establish a federally recognized government-to-government relationship with the United States.”

What the trustees need is an indebted president — and Obama is their man. Meanwhile, what Hawaii needs is a brigade of lean and hungry federal prosecutors, a multi-pronged civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice, and prison space to house much of the state’s political and economic elite for the next 10-20 years.

Let us hope that Congress has learned its lesson.

Andrew Walden is Editor of the Hawai`i Free Press in Hilo, HI and may be reached at andrewwalden@email.com.

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/price_of_apology_clinton_obama/

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April 28, 2002

State pension plan needs overhaul

As a retiree drawing a hard-earned pension after serving more than 32 years with the Honolulu Police Department, I've been following with much interest the news concerning the management of the State of Hawaii Employees Retirement System, and particularly of Rep. Brian Schatz's call for an audit.

I felt so strongly about the management of the ERS that I wrote a letter to Schatz, requesting that if he is successful in getting an audit, the length of time it takes the ERS to get retirees their benefits should be investigated.

When I decided to retire and filed my papers with the ERS in 1999, I was told that it would take from six to 12 months for me to receive my "final compensation," so I planned for that time frame.

It did not take six to 12 months. It took 26 months, and that was only after many telephone calls, a number of personal visits, two letters to ERS supervisors, and finally a letter to ERS Administrator David Shimabukuro.

Throughout this time, no one at the ERS could explain to me why it was taking them so long to calculate my benefits. Fortunately, I had adequate resources to meet my financial obligations. Other retirees are not so fortunate.

Should the audit of the ERS be approved, their processing time and perhaps their accounting procedures should be scrutinized and overhauled to ensure that retirees receive their hard-earned benefits in a "reasonable" amount of time.

Maj. Robert L. Silva (Retired)
Kailua

http://starbulletin.com/2002/04/28/editorial/indexletters.html

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Brian Schatz is expected to testify regarding his business, professional, political and personal relationships with Linda Lingle, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, David C. Farmer, Kamehameha Schools, Matsuo Takabuki, Henry Peters, Richard Wong, Oswald Stender, Nathan Aipa, Duke Bainum, Ed Case, Dan Case, Steve Case, Jeffrey Case, Suzanne Case, Judith Neustadter Fuqua, Colbert Matsumoto, OHA, Haunani Apoliona, Greg Dunn, Peter Savio, The Nature Conservancy, Faye Kurren, Judge Barry Kurren, Judge David Ezra, Richard Turbin, Laura Thielen, Dirk Kempthorne, Daniel Akaka, Dan Inouye, Neil Abercrombie, Houghton Freeman, and others to be named upon discovery.