The Most Important Issue Facing the Hawaii Legislature for 2008 -- Testimony by Ken Conklin for the Kaneohe Town Meeting of January 10, 2008.


Aloha kakou e na kini akua a me na po'e a pau o keia pae 'aina.

Newspaper announcements indicated that Senator Jill Tokuda and Representatives Pono Chong and Ken Ito would be hosting tonight's meeting. Mahalo nui to you three Legislators for asking to hear the voice of the people.

I note that all three of you Kane'ohe/Kailua Legislators are either Chair or Vice Chair of the Senate and House committees whose kuleana includes "Hawaiian Affairs" -- this is a remarkable geographic concentration of political power on a statewide topic.

I believe the single most important issue facing Hawai'i in the foreseeable future is the imminent and continuing threat that the lands, resources, government and people of Hawai'i will be divided along racial lines. That's why I have published a 302-page book whose title clearly identifies the threat: "Hawaiian Apartheid -- Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State." I know for certain that at least one Legislator here tonight has a copy of the book, and hopefully will share it with colleagues. It is not available in bookstores, but is in the libraries and can also be found on the internet at http://tinyurl.com/2a9fqa ).

We all have deep love and respect for Hawaiian culture, and all the cultures that make Hawai'i a special place. However, that love and respect has often been twisted into approval, or at least tolerance, for assertions of racial supremacy and for a right to race-based governance. Surely the Aloha Spirit does not call for racially exclusionary government and private institutions. Cultural preservation does not require dividing our people by race. We should not establish one racial group as first-class citizens able to own property and vote throughout all of Hawai'i while everyone else becomes a second-class citizen allowed to own property only in restricted areas and to vote only on limited topics. I regret my harsh words, but I regret more what compels me to utter them.

I request -- indeed, as a voter I demand -- that the Legislature stop supporting the Akaka bill until the voice of the people has been heard -- please place on the ballot the question whether Congress should pass the Akaka bill. As politically experienced elected officials you folks surely understand that no poll conducted by a newspaper or SMS Research is a reliable indicator, and that a vote in the privacy of the secret ballot is the only poll which truly measures public opinion.

I further request -- and as a voter demand -- that the Legislature stop giving away the money, lands, and jurisdictional authority of the State of Hawaii to government and private entities defined by race. I will fight any attempt to take away public lands and resources belonging to all of us, give them to a racially-defined subgroup of us at the expense of all of us, and then continue demanding further annual support forever from the gutted remainder of what once was the State of Hawai'i.

The Legislature has repeatedly gone on record in support of the Akaka bill which would facilitate establishment of a racially exclusionary government to negotiate against the State of Hawai'i for money, land, and legal jurisdiction. Therefore it is very obvious that the Legislature must now stop giving away for nothing those things which it must anticipate will become the focus of negotiations. The Senate and House committees dealing with "Hawaiian Affairs" must come to see their role not as greasing the skids for Hawai'i's slide into racial separatism and race-based handouts, but rather their duty must be to protect the interests of ALL of Hawai'i's people against the insatiable demands of a small minority of a minority.

It is now 4 years since the Kau Inoa racial registry project was launched. During these four years OHA has spent untold millions of government dollars on TV, radio, and newspaper ads, plus glossy mailouts and travel throughout the U.S. trying to get people of the favored race to sign up; but despite all that money and effort less than twenty percent of the more than 400,000 eligible to sign up have done so. Eighty percent of ethnic Hawaiians are clearly voting with their feet against the whole concept of racial separatism. Meantime the vast majority of Hawai'i's people are bombarded by racist messages beamed into their living rooms every night to sign up for a program they are not actually allowed to sign up for. Do not allow a small minority of a minority group to dictate that Hawai'i must have a future of racial balkanization.

Here are six specific issues moving forward from 2007 or likely to come up in 2008, where I request your special vigilance (many more should be cited, but time is limited this evening).

1. Akaka bill -- do not pass any resolution supporting it; instead, place a question on the general election ballot in November asking Hawai'i's people whether we want Congress to pass it. For a 5-paragraph summary of what's wrong with the Akaka bill, plus extensive documentation of the main points, see http://tinyurl.com/yhhz7o

2. Ceded lands -- Believe it or not, the ceded lands rightfully belong to all Hawai'i's people. Assertions that ethnic Hawaiians somehow communally own the ceded lands have been made so many times that even some Legislators might believe that lie. The only race-based claim on the ceded lands is the one the Legislature passed around 1980, which the Legislature can rescind whenever it wishes; namely, that OHA shall be given a 20 % share of ceded land revenue. It is ludicrous to say that OHA should be given 20 % of gross revenues from ceded lands without regard to the expenses for the capital improvements and maintenance which generate that revenue. It is equally ludicrous to say that OHA should get 20 % of revenues from the duty-free shop in Waikiki merely because a portion of the airport is landfill above submerged ceded lands. Please kill any OHA-proposed legislation related to the ceded lands. Indeed, please put an end to this nonsense by rescinding any and all allocation of ceded land revenues to anyplace other than the general fund.

3. In June 2006 a confidential internal memo from OHA became public. The memo laid out Plan B in case the Akaka bill fails in Congress (which had actually happened earlier that month on a cloture petition in the Senate). Plan B calls for the establishment of a race-based governing entity to be "recognized" by the State of Hawai'i just as there are state-recognized Indian tribes elsewhere which lack federal recognition. Plan B calls for the State of Hawai'i to transfer land, money, and jurisdictional authority to the Plan B governing entity just as though the Akaka bill had passed. In 2008 it can be expected that OHA will introduce legislation to begin implementing Plan B. Please defeat any such legislation. To read the Plan B memo see http://tinyurl.com/ez2ey , and for information about some things already under way as the beginnings of Plan B, see http://tinyurl.com/wv59r .

4. OHA routinely proposes numerous bills to get the Legislature to pay for things which OHA should pay for, such as the construction of a new headquarters for OHA. Of course it must be anticipated that anything the state now builds or funds for OHA will be handed over to the new Akaka tribe or the Plan B ethnic Hawaiian governing entity. Please stop funding such things. OHA has about $400 Million in assets, plus a steady stream of annual income. Let OHA pay for OHA headquarters plus whatever other projects would be for the benefit of OHA or for the Akaka tribe or for a racially focused set of beneficiaries.

5. The "Host culture" charter schools were established as a way to encourage attendance, achievement, ethnic pride, and preservation of Hawaiian culture. However, these PUBLIC tax-supported schools also routinely violate the separation of church and state by engaging in religious ceremony, prayer, and indoctrination as part of the curriculum during the school day. The creation story taught as fact leads children to believe in a theory of racial supremacy on the grounds that ethnic Hawaiians are descended from the gods and are brothers to the 'aina in a way nobody can be who lacks a drop of native blood. The schools also function like Islamist madrassas, teaching children a distorted version of history leading them to harbor anti-American and anti-Caucasian prejudices. The Legislature should hold open hearings on these matters, leading to major reforms. Would the Legislature allow creation of Japanese-focus charter schools indoctrinating children with Shinto religion, demanding fluency in Japanese language, and teaching the Yasukuni Shrine's social studies curriculum regarding World War II ? For an overview of the "Host culture" charter schools as an agent of racial separatism and ethnic nationalism, see http://tinyurl.com/2h6uo and for a webpage containing testimony on the charter schools for a Legislative committee hearing in November 2007 see http://tinyurl.com/2wfxvl .

6. Bioprospecting -- a special commission previously authorized by the Legislature, with a racially and ideologically stacked majority mandated by the enabling legislation, will propose legislation stripping landowners of the right to invite researchers to gather small samples of biota from their land, and further stripping landowners of a large portion of the income they might otherwise enjoy from ensuing scientific discoveries. Under the proposed legislation, both the authority to grant permits for bioprospecting and the revenues from the licensing of commercially viable discoveries would be diverted to a race-based agency under the oft-heard buzzword theory of "indigenous rights" or "indigenous intellectual property rights." For a scholarly discussion of the general topic of indigenous intellectual property rights, see http://tinyurl.com/2b77k and for an analysis specifically focused on the bioprospecting issue see http://tinyurl.com/yud9gw .


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