A last-minute emcee gig necessitated an overnighter on Oahu this past weekend. Yes, Memorial Day weekend — one of the five worst times of the year to travel, according to USA Today. To my surprise and relief, the airports were busy, but not insanely so. It only took 20 minutes or so to get ...
This week we look at HB 2416, a bill that applies Hawaii use tax to intangible property. The use tax is a tax designed to protect our local businesses. As a consumer, you often have a choice between buying a product from a local seller and one from somewhere out of state. Our general excise ...
Watching the storms in the Eastern United States over the weekend reminds us we will soon be entering storm season here in the Pacific. Every year we write editorials about preparation. June 1 through Nov. 30 is officially hurricane season here. The Hawaiian Islands lie in an area of the ...
Here we go again. Kilauea is erupting again big time for the last two to three weeks now. The so-called experts’ comments are just mind-boggling. Here a few phrases I hear on the subject. It could go on for days, weeks, months, years, decades or even longer. The big one could go off any ...
There must be some serious cognitive dissonance or denial going on in our local American minds. Constant references to a U.S. Constitution with a National Defense Authorization Act and Patriot Act in plain sight. Can someone please explain to the intentionally deluded you may have a U.S. ...
Sens. Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono violated the will of the people who elected them when they did not carry the people’s wishes, as expressed in the Presidential Preference Primary of 2016, to support Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party nomination. Through that act, they are guilty of ...
Go, go, go. My drive for doing and producing has gotten me far in life. I have owned nice assets: a small consulting firm, a “castle” in Kula, expensive cars, and have travelled the world. I have succeeded in the material world. Like many of us now I want to satisfy my soul’s yearning. ...
Tony Novak-Clifford took me to Bali last Saturday. I didn’t have to get on a plane. I just had to turn the pages of his new “BALI Portraits of Life, Culture & Ritual” to get lost in spellbinding landscapes and catch glimpses through the expressive eyes of these captivating people, ...
When the Maui/Molokai Drug Court was in its infancy, the program participants organized a holiday party for their families. As I walked in and saw over 200 children, I was overwhelmed. It became crystal clear that the help our community provides participants through Drug Court has a direct ...
What is an amateur? In old-time parlance, it was simply an athlete who did not receive monetary compensation for his participation in an athletic pursuit. For decades, that line has been winked at as athletes received educations valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars in return for ...
The May 20 Viewpoint by a local schoolteacher and president of the Maui Chapter of the Hawaii State Teachers Association started with a skewed, if not outright falsehood, statement stating that Hawaii schools are purposefully underfunded. According to ...
My brother was born in Wailuku on April 6, 1943, and died later that day. According to my parents, he was buried in a small cemetery there in Wailuku, I believe. We moved to Oahu in 1944 because my father was stationed there during part of WWII. We later moved to the Mainland. My siblings ...
And the winner of the 2018 (ig)Nobel Peace Prize is none other than our very own (in)famous President Trump, who reminds us that peace is just one nuclear war away — and there was no collusion! Jeff Bigler Wailuku
In recent days there have been articles in the paper about the declining birthrate in America. There was also an article concerning abortions, that stated 881 babies were killed in the womb, every day. It appears to me that if the abortions were stopped, our declining birthrate would stop. ...
Q: I was wondering why the county would tear up a perfectly good field that many kids use for soccer and various sports to build a new skate park when the County of Maui owns an adjoining piece of property right between the school and baseball park. It would seem like a better solution to build ...
For many years, travel companies marketing Hawaii on behalf of hotels and other accommodations charged our visitors the state’s general excise tax and transient accommodations tax on their share of the sales price of a unit. The companies then pocketed the taxes collected rather than paying ...
Monday is Memorial Day. It is a day intended to honor those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in war while serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. All too sadly, most of those who paid the sacrifice were young people who really never got to savor the benefits of freedom. ...
We, owners at the Kaanapali Hillside, and other communities waited for more than 15 years to have the Puukolli Road paved. It was in shambles, so less than two years ago our dreams of a newly paved road came about. The paving is far less than adequate as it is already deteriorating with ...
On behalf of the Lahainaluna Boarders Association, aloha to Ben Lowenthal for his awesome “State of Aloha” column on May 4. His writing was highly educational as well as memory inducing. Yes, this is the time of year that boarders at Lahainaluna trek up the mountain to continue a ...
Not again! Just weeks ago in Parkland, Fla., we had a deranged young man open fire in a school killing many innocent people and now in Santa Fe, Texas, we have a seemingly normal individual who murders 10 students and wounded many others. Folks, we have an epidemic of deranged and confused ...