TRAVELGATE-
Hawaiian Style
A Sighting from The Catbird Seat
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September 13, 2008 9:16 PM
From: "Hapa1234@aol.com"
To: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov, webmaster@ustaxcourt.gov, sf.nancy@mail.house.gov, Congress.org@capwiz.com, keith.i.kawachi@hawaii.gov, edo@spike.dor.state.co.us, insfraud@dcca.hawaii.gov, webactivist@aarp.org, bobby_n_harmon@yahoo.com
Check out Hawaii Reporter: TRAVEL-GATE
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"Information is [still] the currency of DEMOCRACY"?
- Thomas Jefferson
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PARROTS BEHIND THE REGULATED HAWAII NEWSROOMS FOR THE PUBLIC SUBSIDIZED "SOCIAL ENGINEERS IN PARADISE" {WASH POST}:
The vague AP report on the Non-Profit / Political TRAVEL-GATE: Broken Trust - Hawaiian Style:
Honolulu - The state Office of Hawaiian Affairs is revising its travel policies because of pricey airfares purchased by trustees.
Trustee ROWENA AKANA traveled three times to the East Coast last year on full-fare unrestricted coach tickets at a cost of more than $2500 each. That's nearly triple the fares that OHA Administrator Clyde Namuo says was available then.
AKANA said she usually flies the most direct route and is often not informed early enough about travel or her travel is approved late, forcing her to buy tickets at the last minute.
Four Trustees traveled to Washington [DC} in May to LOBBY for the AKAKA BILL but paid vastly different airfares, according to travel documents obtained by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin [with Board Directors linked to the nonprofit Broken Trust cabals].
AKANA spent $2,548.40, more than double the cost of trustee Boy Mossman's ticket for $1,130.13 which included a stop over in Phoenix for another meeting.
AKANA said she is being singled out and noted her tickets were not first class. And she questioned the travel costs incurred by Chairwoman HAUNANI APOLIONA, who flew FIRST CLASS to Washington [DC] in 2005 for more than $3600.
AKANA said APOLIONA'S travel costs for 2005 and 2006 were a "whopping $56,089.53."
APOLIONA said as chairwoman, she has "traveled consistent with the expectations of doing my duties."
"On ROWENA'S part, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones," said trustee OSWALD STENDER [Patton Boggs], chairman of OHA'S financial affairs committee.
STENDER said OHA will require that all travel go through the agency in-house travel service to find the least expensive fare."
{End of Full AP Report}
Public Scope: THE BROKEN TRUST LEGACY (King & Roth): "GREED, MISMANAGEMENT & POLITICAL MANIPULATION AT AMERICA'S LARGEST CHARITABLE TRUST".
Do the DISAVOWED Public facts matter for exclusive special interests, based on multi-racial cultures, in diversified Blue Hawaii Nei?
dismissed catbirds - Sovereign Asian Pacific Kabuki theatre
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The article:
March 28, 2008
Following the Trail of Money,
Influence and Arrogance at the
Office of Hawaiian Affairs
By Malia Zimmerman, Hawaii Reporter
In 2005, when Hawaii Reporter questioned the spending habits of the Office of Hawaii Affairs’ elected trustees, we were immediately brushed off. Not deterred, we filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests but, in violation of Hawaii’s open government law, we never received a response. Finally with the intervention of the Office of Information Practices, the office that advocates for open government, were told we could get the information for a bargain -- a mere $11,000.
What did we want to know?
We simply wanted to follow the money.
Specifically we asked how much money OHA trustees were spending on travel and what class they traveled in (I knew they traveled in First Class because I was on a flight with several of the trustees to Washington, D.C. and while I went to coach, they went to First Class);
We asked where the trustees stayed while on their trips, for how long and at what cost; and what family members traveled with them and on whose nickel;
We asked how much they spent on advertising for the Kau Inoa campaign to get Hawaiians to sign their blood quantum registry (they sponsor numerous newscasts, most likely to the tune of millions of dollars over the last few years);
We asked how much they spent on parties under the guise of getting signatures for Kau Inoa (we’d heard they spent $60,000 on an elaborate party in Las Vegas and obtained very few signatures in the process);
We also asked how much they spent on lobbying with their D.C. firm and local lawyers, advertising and advocating for the Akaka bill and where the money was going.
In June 2006, Hawaii Reporter was the only news organization to fly to Washington, D.C. to cover the Akaka Bill cloture debate at the U.S. Capitol. Afterward, we were the only Hawaii news organization to attend OHA’s press conference, which followed the press conference by Akaka Bill opponents in the U.S. Senate. At that press conference, I asked OHA chair Haunani Apoliona why she hadn’t responded to my FOIA requests. In front of other national media and the attorney general, she promised that OHA was working on compiling the information and would get it to me soon. I persisted but she refused to estimate how much OHA was spending on advertising, Kau Inoa and the Akaka bill, and would not answer questions about her personal expenses including her first class travel to D.C. and accommodations.
Funny, Hawaii Reporter never received that information from OHA and the more we pushed, the more OHA began to attack us in their monthly newsletter Ka Wai Ola and in press releases. OHA even sent a photographer to follow me and harass me at an Akaka Bill debate that I covered (but it was no bother -- I felt like a celebrity followed by the paparazzi). Amazing that the money that was supposed to go to Hawaiians was instead being used to pay a photographer to chase me around -- and no one seemed to care. During 2007, we renewed our call for information, but received nothing.
Then in 2008, we published a ZeroShibai.com cartoon -- “Cow Inoa” - poking fun at Apoliona, the Akaka Bill, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Outraged, Apoliona lashed out, issuing a press release that called us “racist” and said Hawaii Reporter is not a real news organization. She, a state elected official -- demanded we pull the cartoon. KGMB TV covered the story, interviewing former Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Crystal Kua, who now works for OHA as its media spokesperson, and she echoed the same sentiments.
KGMB Reporter Lisa Kubota also interviewed me and aired four reports -- all very fair and balanced -- and in each I said the cartoon was a response to OHA’s secretive and arrogant attitude and refusal to reveal any financial information since 2005. I called OHA Hawaii’s most powerful and most secretive state agency and said no media investigate the trustees because they sponsor virtually every newscast on every local news station (KGMB’s Kubota disclosed her station takes money from OHA). I also noted that anyone who challenges OHA is deemed a "racist" (if they are non-Hawaiian) or "radical fringe" (if they are Hawaiian).
We received weeks of hate mail from people calling us all kinds of names for publishing the cartoon -- and several of them wrote to our advertisers trying to get them to cancel their ads. Some of our advertisers were threatened. We traced some of those letters back to recipients of OHA money. The national media covered the story and noted how amazing it was that a state agency was ordering us to pull the cartoon and interfering with the First Amendment.
On March 17, 2008, St. Patrick’s Day, something remarkable happened. During a joint Senate hearing at the state Capitol on the proposed $200 million ceded lands settlement, several dozen Hawaiians for more than 5 hours testified to their outrage over OHA’s representation of them. Their anger was so intense, that the very lawmakers who’d just voted to approve the settlement changed their vote and held the bill. Several Hawaiians said they distrusted OHA and did not believe the agency was representing them. Some called for an audit.
State Senators were surprised by the opposition to OHA and agreed to author a resolution calling for a fiscal and management audit of OHA.
Thursday, the Senate Agriculture and Hawaiian Affairs committee heard the measure. OHA trustees came out in strong opposition. State attorney general Mark Bennett, who commonly appears on OHA-sponsored television programs, and testifies for OHA before Congress, came out strongly against the resolution. He accused Senators of calling for the "punitive" audit in retaliation for the piece he authored with OHA trustees in one of the daily papers this Sunday critical of the Senators’ decision to hold this session the ceded lands bill that he negotiated.
But Hawaiians who endorsed the idea of an audit of OHA overwhelmed the moral indignation of OHA trustees and Bennett. Some Hawaiians even asked:
How much has been spent on OHA commercials and television shows promoting the Akaka Bill and Kau Inoa;
What about the Kau Inoa tee shirts -- how much do they cost;
And the parties OHA is throwing under the guise of promoting Kau Inoa, how much do those cost;
How much has been spent on lobbying for the Akaka Bill;
How much are the trustees spending on themselves.
One Hawaiian told Senators that he'd been told it would cost $11,000 to get the information he requested.
Senators on the committee voted unanimously to pass the audit resolution and in fact plan to strengthen the language detailing the concerns of their Hawaiian constituents.
The resolution will go to the Ways and Means committee, and there will be tremendous pressure on the members to kill it there and delay the audit. But the fact is, the tide is turning against OHA and they are now suspect.
In a Honolulu Star-Bulletin blog entry, a writer compared the current climate at OHA to the corruption at Bishop Estate a decade ago -- something I have done publicly as well. That corruption at the Bishop Estate -- which boiled down to trustees taking millions of dollars for themselves and their political cronies -- is well documented in a book called Broken Trust by University of Hawaii Professor Randall Roth and Judge Samuel King.
If history really repeats itself, OHA trustees may find themselves investigated and then ousted as Bishop Estate’s high paid trustees were a decade ago.
The lesson: Hawaii's media doesn't want to challenge the establishment, because, as with the Bishop Estate, it is more lucrative to get along.
Reform and accountability have to come from within the Hawaiian community -- the call for these is getting louder. It seems the depth of discontent is extremely severe.
Reach Malia Zimmerman, editor of Hawaii Reporter, at mailto:Malia@hawaiireporter.com
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For more, GO TO > > > The Office of Hawaiian Affairs
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