Happy New Year!
2020 is going to be a great year in policy and politics, of that I am sure. On a national and international scale, things can certainly not get much worse. The recent impeachment of President Trump represents a positive turning point for the planet, and soon I hope we will be able to say good riddance to the worst president ever. While it seems unlikely that the Republican majority in the Senate will muster the courage to vote him out, I am hopeful that the majority of Americans will do so — regardless of who the Democratic Party nominee is.
It is really crazy when you think about it. Our president is a self-absorbed, deranged and dangerous man — and everyone knows it. Every day on a global stage he demonstrates his unstableness and unsuitability for the office of president, reinforcing a whole new definition of “the ugly American.” Every day the world laughs at him and at us. Every day more people die along our borders and in countries near and far. Because of his actions and inactions, the world is a much more dangerous place today than it was yesterday.
The elections of 2020 cannot come soon enough.
On a local county level, the 2020 elections will also see changes, of that there is no doubt. The good news is that at least two sitting members of the council, Councilmember Brun and Councilmember Kagawa will not be coming back. Kagawa is “termed out” and unable to run for re-election and Brun has to deal with his felony indictment. My guess is that it is highly unlikely that he would run for re-election — but of course you never know.
All seven seats on the Kauai County Council are up for reelection. However with the absence of two incumbent members, the dynamics are such that new candidates seeking to break into council service have a significantly better chance of being elected in 2020.
Rumor has it, however, that former Councilmember and former Mayor JoAnn Yukimura and former Councilmember and former mayoral candidate Mel Rapozo are waiting in the wings. If either or both of these “formers” should decide to run, that would likely put a dampener on the aspirations of new candidates hoping to fill one of the so-called “open” seats.
The other persistent rumor (and yes, it is fun to speculate), is that Councilmember Kagawa is on the hunt and looking for a place to land in 2020. Though he has not publicly announced his intentions, Kagawa’s campaign spending report (effective Oct. 15, 2019) indicate he will be running against incumbent Daynette “Dee” Morikawa.
Campaign Spending Reports — June 30, 2019
Bank balance, available funds, campaign chair and office sought
Ross Kagawa
$10,438
Chair – Warren Koga
Office sought – House #16
*Note – While the “office sought” indicates District #16, the campaigns address and the public address of CM Kagawa indicate he resides in District #15. Ultimately, the candidate must reside in the district in which he/she is elected and so either CM Kagawa has recently moved or will be moving into District #16, or switching his race to District #15
Arthur Brun
$ 7,211
Chair – Ron Sakoda
Office sought – Council
Arryl Kaneshiro*
$51,409
Chair – Dalton Matsuyama
Office sought – Council (incumbent)
Luke Evslin*
-$701.36 (minus)
Chair -Michael Miranda
Office sought – Council (incumbent)
KipuKai Kualii*
$17,261
Chair – Joseph Carrillo
Office sought – Council (incumbent)
Mason Chock*
$2,730
Chair – Lorna Cummings-Poe
Office sought – Council (incumbent)
Felicia Cowden*
-$2,649 (minus)
Chair – Patricia Wistinghausen
Office sought – Council (incumbent)
JoAnn Yukimura
$5,691
Chair – Gerald Hirata
Office sought – Council
Melvin Rapozo
-$3,351.29 (minus)
Chair – Kaleo Perez
Office sought – Council
Nadine Nakamura*
$46,966.
Chair – Bernadette Sakoda
Office sought – House #14 (incumbent)
James Tokioka*
$23,296
Chair – Dan Mackey
Office sought – House #15 (incumbent)
Daynette “Dee” Morikawa*
$15,853
Chair – Brycen Hiraoka
Office sought – House #16 (incumbent)
Ronald Kouchi*
$172,752
Chair – Scott Kouchi
Office sought – Senate #8 (incumbent)
NOTE: The next Campaign Spending Reports are due to be published and available to the public on Jan. 31, 2020 for the period ending Dec. 31, 2019.
•••
Gary Hooser formerly served in the state Senate, where he was majority leader. He also served for eight years on the Kauai County Council and was former director of the state Office of Environmental Quality Control. He serves presently in a volunteer capacity as board president of the Hawaii Alliance for Progressive Action (HAPA) and is executive director of the Pono Hawaii Initiative.
Termed out? What does that mean? They never existed. Brun and Kagawa. Seriously ill is more like it.
Gary,
It sounds like Kauai is preparing to recycle, same old good ole boy network of corruption. Before you spread false and fake news about current state of affairs I find it very interesting you think the President is deranged because he thinks we need to protect our boarder. Before he was elected the economy was slipping, our allies had been ripping tax payers off for years, we relied on the middle east for oil and had no immigration policy.
As far as the boarder Gary there are folks that would like to smuggle a Nuke the size of a brief case into downtown San Diego and kill millions.
You bark about the wall, how about solve housing, crime, drugs, corruption and start with getting rid of all non US residents that occupy what little housing is on Kauai. Why is it targeting tourist is so much fun yet when it comes to looking in the mirror and recognizing their are over 4,000 non US residents that have over stayed their visa here on Kauai that cause traffic, and take aprox. 600-800 housing units off the rental market is part of the problem.
Kauai beware voting in the same old corruption will not solve Kauai problems, people like Gary should research their facts. OH wait yes I’m sure the Green New Deal was your research.
A boarder is someone who lives with you or others, or boards a ship after an attack. A border is a demarcation between 2 areas, in this case Countries. It doesn’t instill confidence in your opinion when you use incorrect words multiple times.
So much for starting off the new year without divisive rhetoric. Very sad.
Another “hit piece.”. just remember not all of us have the same viewpoint as you. “Orange man bad.”. Look at the democrats eating their own and playing their own games on each other for the presidential seat. i’m neither left or right but the savageness of you liberals on the left is so cartoony and childish.
Mr. Hoosier, taking issue with you today seems appropriate regarding your article today.
First off you yourself were rejected by the voters for reasons serious to the voters and some newspaper comments continue their disgust with you. So your ridiculing the President is a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
In addition you make quite a few disparaging remarks about our
President but you give us NO factual proof of same other than hysteria of the sheep people repeating over and over same delirious remarks without basis in facts.
Many of us not only do not think that Mr. Trump’s query into Corruption by our then in office former Vice President Biden and now presidential candidate Biden, regarding his son being handed, oddly, out of the blue, a $50,000 a month job on the board of an alleged corrupt utility company in a tiny country is not only suspect to many of us as being a Quid pro Quo, an “if you give me this, I’ll give you that”, in this case weapons paid for with our US tax dollars…so not only would MANY OF US expect the current President to look into this possible corruption using ANY MEANS NECESSARY to discover the truth, especially when the possible corrupt employment of Biden’s son in an alleged corrupt company in a tiny country known for corruption, in fact many of us citizens and taxpayers actually DEMAND that our President use whatever means is necessary to get to the bottom of the former in office Vice President. Would we here on Kauai tolerate a foreigner being paid $50,000 a month to be on the board of KIUC our electric utility company with no prior experience and was the son of the Vice President of Ukraine? Let’s ask our Board Members of KIUC…?
There are many Americans who feel that President Trump’s request by a recorded phone call to get to the bottom of why Biden’s son, a former rehab patient, news outlets claim rehab was for drugs, with no Prior utility experience would be given a Board of Directors job at $50,000 a month in a deal that the news claimed included millions of US Dollars in weapons, followed up by a Vice President Biden threat to withhold those weapons if an investigation into this alleged corrupt utility was not ended by the Ukraine prosecutor.
But it does not stop there, what about further allegation, not denied by the Biden’s, that Biden’s son was also given another job on a Chinese Board of Directors for another company in which the Chinese government gave Biden’s son $1.5 Billion dollars, while Vice President Biden was in office and traveling to and from China in an official U.S. airplane with his son on board. And the $1.5 Billion dollar gift appeared to be a “Quid pro Quo”, a this for that, in regards to keeping the US-China trade deficit the same continuing to be US buys $500 Billion in goods from China, while they buy only $35 Billion form us, the US.
The Chinese $500 Billion they receive from us, the US, goes into the build up of the Chinese Military…against us…? If that $1.5 Billion is a corruption…it seems realistic to add Treason to the allegations. And Biden wants to be President and would his son like Trump appoint his Biden son to be one of his high paid ADVISORS…what is our nation even thinking about letting Biden run the show, a life long politician? No business background, ruthless or not…these are ruthless times, we need a ruthless business man now and next term for President and we are doing fine with the one we have right now.
$1.5 Billion from China to Biden’s son and no one is denying it, nor telling us where the $$$ went…that’s 1,500 suitcases with $1 million dollars in each suitcase. Even the Vise Presidential airplane could not carry that many suitcases…they must have wired it…!
But wired where and to whom…that’s enough $$$ to share with the former President and most of the top level Democrats begging to, and continue to complete the impeachment of our current President doing his job protecting us taxpayers and citizens from past and possibly continued corruption by a candidate who may be the next President? Certainly that is enough money, $1.5 Billion, to go around and fatten the pockets of plenty Democrats in office.
It’s for sure our Tulsi never got any.
And now the news agencies are saying that, and what makes this an even sad comedy, that Biden’s son in involved in an investigation of $500 Million in COUNTERFEIT money? This Biden thing is going off the Richter Earthquake scale.
The Biden son is alleged to be in a few nasty plots deserving of 007’s coming to our rescue, at least our current President has the courage to get to the bottom of this.
Now, we are in America, and Biden and his son, are considered innocent until proven guilty, just what Pres. Trump was obligated to do trying to investigate on his phone call to the Ukraine President. And that phone call is not grounds to IMPEACH, but makes Pres. Trump deserving of a medal along with a medal for MAGA, and what he is doing for our economy, e.g., 700,000 Americans off food stamps means they found jobs.
President Trump is a hardcore business man, and never a lawyer or politician OF whoM have been running our country into the ground with wars all over the place for regime change purposes, and ridiculous trade deficits with China and too many other countries, and to much of our tax dollars going to foreign governments with no accounting of where the money goes, while we have too many homeless, wounded soldiers, psycho gun attacks and a Disease Care
System that can only make $4 Trillion dollars a year if there is more and more diseases every year, which statistics show is true…more and more drugs and more and more diseases…80 of Americans on sick, and disease causing, but legal drugs…outlaw medical drugs that need to be outlawed and replaced by Health Care Methods that do not require our nation’s people on cancer causing drugs.
And now Mr. Hooser, innocent till proven guilty…? You’ve slammed our President with no facts and only slurs…and further…HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ACCUSED OF A FELONY YOU NEVER COMMITTED BUT, IN FACT WERE PROVEN INNOCENT IN COURT AND YOUR “Allegator’s” were lying and corrupt plotting against you for financial reasons, deserving an FBI investigation, instead got a hushed up burial of all the wrong doings…let’s hope the Republicans bring to trial the real corrupt who have smeared our nation in dirt these last 3 years…
…and is Mr. Brun also being accused of aptly “Trumped up” charges…? Accused of hitting a policeman with his car, yet no report of injury…? The allegations against Mr. Brun stink from the start. Being accused and possibly falsely, by our county really, would seem to make Mr. Brun no longer want to waste his precious time working for County as our council member.
So back off Gary, for the time being you are making a fool of yourself…especially since people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Are you qualified to cast that proverbial “first stone”, as in did your business ever pay the $80,000 in back taxes it was allegedly claimed, your business allegedly skipped out on…?
Great points of truth, except for the “our Tulsi”? i wish more island people would quit being in denial. I do not like being a guinea pig for any faction associated with this increasing microwaves, pulsing intensity, 808kamtrales, umbilical from cali to ballistic oops missiles, or off naPali submarine caves, the ongoing Ruse war, like destroy Kahoolawe as they did bikini isle! How many military combinations are necessary on each island? Why is PMRF (missile intercept) noted on a surf site report, as THE baddest military on the planet”! The militaropoliticojudicio occupation and those that are complicit unwilling to talk through the reality. Soon, a concerted effort, keep it simple, pledge allegiance, possible waitlisted to your voted seat, if another is better qualified or suited, or votee will be properly severenced. Those equipped standard to steward, it could be as easy. Removing Cooks statue, changing the letterhead, dismissing the america occupier flag and accordingly downsize ahupua’a leadership, kuleana, unincorporate ‘Hawaiian Kingdom’ a Status that was never Extinguished. How easy it could be resolved if terroristic greedy in our faces, obvious, think we arent on to them! d.c. to kauai, top to bottom! i have characterized at least 50 guilty stolen mailbox, kauai Island. It has begun with grand jury indictment, arrest, so as they say, the cards are beginning to fail. Pay Attention. you certainly failed the last voter test and hired a younger version of the same ol’ boy hui.
GAME OVER, guest request TGI
The campaign spending commish is a “set up” group that parallels everything that is wrong with all the gary-types, hell-bent on keeping quiet about the reality that accompanies several dozen guilty stolen mailbox not yet exposed. Me (a puppy, court attacks cocopalms, recent campaign spending commission) tag or Mr. Brun, (rigged gig GMO, x2KPD court) tag MADE criminals.
I know first hand what this feels like, yet our voted leaders are quieted. I am not allowed to voice my opinion in the Council, TGI and Team Zuckerberg Has us locked up Too, so that media coverages are squashed, sidelined (helicopter crash), nonsensical editing, placed as opala! There is no going back! We have found the keys that opens every door. WE are not going away!
ALOHA will save the planet, and the planning director, Uhane Hemolele is calling the shots! The “plan” Akua has for Each and Everyone of us, NOT U.S. (unincorporated) us,
Each time I read an article on Kauai politics, I always wonder if I returned back to the Westside, would I run for council?
What do you think Judge Valenciano? 😉
So excited for Trump’s reelection this 2020!!!!!
It’s gonna be a great year.