This is the sweetest, best tasting, Pineapple in the world.
Grown on Maui by Hali'imaile Pineapple Co.
Please buy this product!!! PRIDE IN ISLAND!!! Cost is the spectre haunting health reform. For many decades, the great flaw in the American health-care system was its unconscionable gaps in coverage. Those gaps have widened to become graves—resulting in an estimated forty-five thousand premature deaths each year—and have forced more than a million people into bankruptcy. The emerging health-reform package has a master plan for this problem. By establishing insurance exchanges, mandates, and tax credits, it would guarantee that at least ninety-four per cent of Americans had decent medical coverage. This is historic, and it is necessary. But the legislation has no master plan for dealing with the problem of soaring medical costs. And this is a source of deep unease.
Health-care costs are strangling our country. Medical care now absorbs eighteen per cent of every dollar we earn. Between 1999 and 2009, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family insurance coverage rose from $5,800 to $13,400, and the average cost per Medicare beneficiary went from $5,500 to $11,900. The costs of our dysfunctional health-care system have already helped sink our auto industry, are draining state and federal coffers, and could ultimately imperil our ability to sustain universal coverage.
Attorney for taro farmers calls recommendations ‘ludicrous’ By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer
POSTED: December 13, 2009
WAILUKU – In what appears to be a blow to East Maui Native Hawaiian taro farmers and environmentalists – and a potential much-needed win for struggling Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. – the state Commission on Water Resource Management staff has recommended that water diverted by HC&S be restored to only one of the 19 streams it uses to irrigate its sugar crop.
The staff findings are only recommendations, but Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. attorneys said on Saturday that they believe the seven-member commission will rely heavily on the staff assessments and recommendations when it renders its decision, most likely during a public meeting scheduled for Wednesday in Paia.
The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at the Paia Community Center with a staff presentation and time for questions from Water Resource Management Commission members, Chairwoman Laura Thielen said on Saturday. Thielen is also director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
The public will get a chance to testify beginning at 1 p.m., and Thielen said she expects her fellow commissioners to reach a consensus that evening or the next day, depending on how many people want to speak.
Thielen said she received the 56-page report, signed by Deputy Director Ken Kawahara, last week.
Thielen said she thinks that the staff "did a very good, very thorough job," but she will listen to other commissioners’ questions and public testimony before making a decision on how she will cast her own vote on the issue. She also noted that the Native Hawaiian groups did get more than 12 million gallons of water a day restored to streams in the same watershed last year through an almost identical commission process.
Hawaii and Maui counties have been designated primary natural disaster areas because of losses caused by drought this year, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced.
"President Obama and I understand these conditions caused severe damage to these areas and serious harm to farms in Hawaii, and we want to help," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "This action will provide help to hundreds of farmers who suffered significant production losses to warm season grasses."
Some parts of Hawaii had a lot of rain the past month, but it fell mainly in places that do not have serious drought conditions, says Kevin Kodama, senior service hydrologist at the Honolulu Forecast Office.
DROUGHT IN THE ISLANDS
Hawaii County » Extreme drought: South Kohala » Severe drought: Kau, North and South Kona » Moderate drought: Lower Kona slopes (Honaunau to Kalaoa)
Maui County » Severe drought: Central and West Maui, West Molokai » Moderate drought: East Molokai, Lanai
Source: National Weather Service
Portions of the Big Island did not receive much rain, and they are still hurting from drought, said the National Weather Service meteorologist.
Hawaii’s wet season is from October through April, but Kodama and Jim Weyman, meteorologist-in-charge of the Honolulu Forecast Office, said in October it would be drier-than-normal from mid-December through April because of El Nino conditions.
An El Nino is a weather phenomenon in the equatorial Pacific with unusually warm sea surface temperatures that affect climate worldwide.
The Big Island’s South Kohala district had the sixth consecutive month of extreme drought in November, Kodama said. Some improvement occurred with rain in the early part of the month — from extreme drought to severe drought, he said.
Then it got windy, and farm agents said the winds "dried things out quick," Kodama said.
That window of opportunity to pull out of the drought is closing, he said.
Climate models have been pretty consistent in predicting drier-than-nomal conditions through the spring, Kodama said.
The Senate Dems are talking about expanding Medicare. Well, expanding Medicare to people over 55. Um, expanding Medicare to some people over 55. Er, expanding Medicare to some people over 55 who can afford to pay the price.
Is this a good idea, or part of a good idea? What and Why?
What is it?
The details are sketchy at this point. The so-called expansion of Medicare is tied to discussions about killing the public option because that insurance company lackey, Senator Joe Lieberman (I, CN), could otherwise kill health care reform demanded by the majority of Americans.
And those right wing nut cases think we lefties are jamming health care reform down their throats?
Expanding Medicare has some appeal, but the Senate solution, like so manyCongressional fixes, manages to muck it up.
Active Property Management, Lease Extension Result in Advantageous Sale of Palm Desert Property
Press Release
Source: A&B Properties, Inc.
On 8:00 am EST, Friday December 11, 2009
HONOLULU–(BUSINESS WIRE)–A&B Properties, Inc., the real estate subsidiary of Alexander & Baldwin, Inc.(NYSE:ALEX – News) (“A&B”), announced today that it has completed the sale of the Village at Indian Wells (“the Village”), a 104,600 square-foot retail and shopping center in the City of Indian Wells, California.
“A&B continues to make advantageous dispositions within its commercial property portfolio, as demonstrated by the sale of the Village at Indian Wells,” said Norbert M. Buelsing, president of A&B Properties. “Favorable pricing was achieved for the resort community shopping center, a reflection of a recent lease extension with an anchor tenant and active property management throughout our 11-year ownership of the Village.”
‘Agricultural disaster’ aid available for Maui County
By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer
POSTED: December 11, 2009
WAILUKU – For the second straight year, Maui County farmers and ranchers could receive federal aid after the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared the county an "agricultural disaster zone" Thursday.
U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka announced the disaster zone, which also includes Hawaii County and Kalaupapa on Molokai. The drought is headed toward a fourth year, although rainfall has increased this fall and winter.
The Agriculture Department’s Weekly Crop Report for Hawaii noted that the state’s crops overall were in fair to good condition with pasture fields slowly improving and orchards doing fine. But Molokai remains under a mandatory 20 percent water reduction for all water consumers, except those on homesteads. The county also still asks residents in Central and South Maui to conserve water consumption voluntarily by 10 percent.
Guam – Department of Agriculture Wildlife Biologist Diane Vice confirms that customs officials discovered a Coqui Frog inside a live plant shipment that came in from Hawaii yesterday. This is the fourth Coqui Frog spotted on Guam.
The frog is of particular concern to biologists like Vice because she says it can rapidly reproduce and that they are notoriously loud. The coqui frog is a proving to be an expensive problem in the state of Hawaii where there are efforts underway to try to curtail their growth, which have cost Hawaii millions of dollars.
Said Vice, "It’s really important we don’t get the coqui frog on Guam because they really make loud noises, which can affect our every day life, our sleep as well as economically it has been very detrimental in Hawaii."
YAP, Federated States of Micronesia (Alertnet) – Giant tides inundated the remote atolls of Micronesia last December, scouring beaches, damaging homes and inundating banana and taro crops. The President of the Federated States of Micronesia, Emanuel Mori, declared a nationwide state of emergency and relief rice was shipped in.
But on several atolls in Yap, one of Micronesia’s four states, taro planted in elevated concrete pits survived.
"This is a way to save the people here," said Stephen Mara, an agriculture teacher at a high school in Yap.
Devastating tides, called "king tides," are one way sea level rise will manifest itself across the western Pacific in the coming decades, said Charles Fletcher, a University of Hawaii coastal geologist and co-author of a recent report on food security and climate risks in Micronesia.
Long before Pacific islands drown, as politicians and the media often predict, the islands may become uninhabitable from a lack of food. Fletcher, in particular, doesn’t think life on the atolls can last without constant humanitarian aid. But concrete may provide a respite, at least temporarily.
