I confess to a great dependence on Annual Reports. When you’re seeking information on grants and granting agencies, sometimes few things can tell you as much about an organization as what they choose to tell you–which is why I am such an avid reader of OHA’s reports. Well, what’s good for the goose and such. [...]
There is a tendency among state legislatures with short annual sessions, to pass a glut of questionable bills right before they adjourn for the year. This is similar to the human instinct to try to camouflage embarrassing or problematic revelations by mixing them with many other questionable items in the hopes that they will somehow [...]
It should be of interest to those affected by the Akaka Bill (in other words, pretty much everyone in Hawaii) to know that Native Hawaiians are not the only ones encountering controversy over the question of federal recognition of tribal status. Columnist and investigative reporter John Stossel writes of the Lumbees of North Carolina, who [...]
If you know your way around this site, you know that there are two ways of perusing the many, many grants we’ve recorded. Many. Many, many, many. It’s overwhelming actually. And overwhelming is kind of the point. No matter where you stand on the issue of Native Hawaiian sovereignty or the Akaka Bill, if you’ve [...]
The Wall Street Journal has a nice little feature piece about the effort to restore the furnishings in Iolani Palace. As is so often the case with features, it’s heavy on the neat-o factor, and maybe not-so-rigorous on the historical fact checking. As a general rule, I like the Journal. And I like the whole [...]
It has been a great couple of weeks for our friends at Hawaii Reporter, who even scored a Drudge mention and a Tonight Show one-liner out of their coverage of the Obama family vacation (see below). So how about a quick round-up of things that cost us money? John Carroll has an examination of the [...]
The omnibus spending spending bill died last week for lack of support. Senator Inouye had inserted into it a mandate for a study to figure out how to make a federally recognized Indian tribe out of persons who have native Hawaiian blood. Commenting on that insert, National Review online editorialized: “ That’s a reference to [...]
Government transparency is one of those things that everyone says they support, but not many people give much thought to. But when you think about it, it’s pretty powerful stuff. Without transparency, a necessary check on government is gone. The media does its best, but with limited resources, a need to turn a profit, and [...]
Actually, there are plenty of good reasons for Native Hawaiians to oppose the Akaka Bill, from believing that it’s not good for Hawaii to mistrusting how it handles the creation of the new Hawaiian government. But the reasons don’t have to be specific to the bill itself. There is also a principled approach that questions [...]
A Lack of Resolution
Over on Hawaii Reporter (which I swear doesn’t do anything to get all these mentions here except produce a broader and more fearless variety of opinions than the vast majority of other Hawaii news sources), Ken Conklin has an interesting take on the most recent effort of the Hawaii Legislature to rewrite history. The article [...]